For most of my life, I have been searching for peace, joy, and rest.

Sometimes what we are searching for is within us all along.

I have held tight to responsibilities for my whole life. Even as a young child, I felt responsible for the happiness of my family. Through family mythology and the position that I occupied, I learned to shift so that I could fill the needs of others. I learned that my needs were always second to their needs. Though the “they” shifted throughout my life, this lens has been the way I viewed the world.

I was searching, inevitably, through this lens and wondering when I might find the elusive peace, joy and rest that I was seeking. When would I have fewer responsibilities? When might I succeed in bringing joy to those around me? How could my decisions best serve the needs of others?

It was a trap, but an inviting, insidious one. People loved me because I became an excellent chameleon. I learned to perceive people’s needs and become the person they needed me to be. I was good at so many things, and as such was awarded greater responsibilities. I brought joy to many, but at a steep cost to my own well-being. It was never enough to satisfy me, but it was always JUST enough to keep me going, to keep me feeling like eventually, everything would lead to peace and joy. Rest came sparingly and only when I could no longer maintain the frenetic pace of people-pleasing. It “worked” but it was exhausting and inauthentic and so hard.

There is freedom in letting go.

There is peace, joy, ease and rest in acknowledging my own desires and abandoning myself to the truth of those desires, in all of their potential to ruin the illusion of perfection I’ve worked so hard to create, in all of my fear that people will love me less or even abandon me outright, in all of my new unwillingness to compromise my own well-being for the sake of others.

There is peace in that my joy is no longer dependent on the action of others, over which I have no control. I am recognizing my responsibility to honor myself, that my choices are that which are most under my control, and that I really cannot control the lives or choices of others. In not being able to make those choices, I also can’t be responsible for them.

There is so much liberation in this.

I am learning to trust myself and my truth, as messy and unkempt as it may be. It is a journey. I am learning the depth of my love and beginning to turn it towards myself. Slowly, but surely. In doing so, I find myself putting less pressure on myself and others. I find myself able to accept the wholeness of who I am, and give grace to myself and others. I find myself dreaming and exploring, more willing to set boundaries (although I’m still not very good at this, to be honest, but I am learning — walking towards is not always arriving right away), but also more willing to push them.

I am grateful for this peace whether it lasts only a moment or a season or becomes my new path.

I am grateful to love fully and be loved completely, perhaps not by as many, but more authentically than I have ever experienced love, than I have ever allowed myself to experience being loved.

Because I am listening and letting that love in, and letting go, and FINALLY beginning to say yes and no with conviction and grace.

It is a gift.

I receive it.