“I will see how I feel in three months.”

These were words I said to myself recently regarding a new role I was not certain I wanted.

This year had come with its surprises and one of those surprises was me asking myself if I still wanted the career path I had worked so hard for.

After years of honing a skill and doing it well – there is an unspoken grief in starting to question if this is what you truly wanted.

So, after one role came to an end, instead of moving on ahead – I paused.

My health had forced me to come face to face with issues I had not allowed myself to think about.

For someone whose life had always been about being productive and proving my worth through being useful, pausing was a truly frightening place to be.

My days no longer commenced with the alarm, the slow rise from the bed with what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders. 

Or that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that my efforts somehow would not be enough. Then coming home with no energy for anything else. 

Then lying awake in my bed until the early hours of the next morning. Only to startle awake a few hours later to the same damn alarm – borrowing energy from an already empty energy bank just to do it all over again.

I was not only physically tired – my soul was fatigued.

Throughout my life, I had come to learn that I needed to keep moving, keep working, keep being useful in order to sustain my life.

So I kept pushing.

Because I had learned that stopping meant failure. It took stopping to realise that this was not true.

You know what it is – that place, that person, that relationship or job you have convinced yourself you need.

If you got the chance to pause and didn’t have to return to the same again – would you feel at peace or not?

My peace came eventually and with it the acceptance of a new beginning I was not sure I wanted – but I moved ahead anyway.

It looks nothing like before and comes with some adjustments.

 I am still ambitious. I am just no longer willing to abandon myself to climb.

And that self-loyalty has been showing up in different ways in my life.

Like choosing movement first thing in the morning.

Taking care of future me by prepping my meals for the next day in a thoughtful and loving way.

And then closing my day with an entry in my journal – so I can listen to myself.

But most importantly, in choosing to do things that make room for my happiness and peace. Like taking time to read books I know I would enjoy and choosing a fruit I have never had before at the greengrocer’s.

These little actions are my way of affirming to myself that I matter and my peace and happiness are important too.

This week you could simply choose to do something for yourself first instead of for everyone else first.

Doing this may feel selfish. Let it. You don’t have to prove you are not by abandoning yourself again.

I know what I no longer want. I am still unsure what comes next, and three months from now I may still not know.

I am taking it one day at a time.

You don’t have to know either. You can start by pausing long enough to listen to yourself. 

If you want somewhere to begin, the journaling prompts in When Did I Disappear? are here – (https://koyankrumah.com/journaling-tools/)