You Can Go Your Own Way

I spent Thanksgiving 2023 alone, and I actually had a really great day. Sure I got some looks when I went on a nature-walk from a family passing by. And later at dinner — where ironically I was seated in the center of the floor outside — I found myself at one point sitting and laughing over the material I was working on and of course, people were confused. You wanna know something? It’s nearly 2 years later and I have zero regrets for choosing me fully, that day.

Unfortunately at the time, going to dinners where I was “welcome” would have meant compromising myself. One table had a guest who had previously made me uncomfortable with his predatorial behavior towards me. At this table I was also not welcome to bring a friend who’d had just gone through a divorce, had she of wanted to join. For the past 7 years I’d never brought a guest, no partner, and the one time I ask, for a friend who needed company, I was denied. Another table doubted my reality just because they couldn’t see the whole picture of where I was in life. And the thing is, we’re human. When you’re capped and have no space to be around folks who are doubting you or aren’t willing to prioritize your needs and value you and the company you bring— choose your own table. Really, the pathway to go my own way was carved out, I just had to embrace it. 

The other thing is reframing. Thanksgiving is a U.S. Holiday — it’s the only country in the world that takes a long weekend to spend time together, while divided. What I mean is, Thanksgiving is still a day of mourning for indigenous folks. While they may still celebrate community and family, the mourning is not apart of the day for most every one else. And frankly, for me, after losing a part-Cherokee embryo to miscarriage, if you don’t make room for me, you don’t make room for my lost child. Plain and simple. 

Going your own way though doesn’t have to mean solitude, like my Thanksgiving solo dinner date with my budding novel, Evergreen. Going your own way just means walking in your authenticity, self-agency, and authority. It means choosing yourself, honoring your needs, regardless of what others may want from you.

Because let’s look at it — had I of went to the table with the man I was uncomfortable around, especially with being just weeks after the attack on 9.13.23, you know what that would have done to my nervous system, to my psyche? It would have reinforced yet again, that my being apart of a family was contingent on my keeping quiet, being overlooked and my needs and wishes being dismissed. It would have reinforced the long-term wiring in my subconscious that I was nothing but something to be used. In short: it would have held me back from all the progress I’d made in this internal work I’d been striving for, for so long.

As for the other table, I’d of signed up to be speculated, somewhat of a tag-on, and at this point in 2023, what I needed and wanted most was all-in presence and attention with myself. Myself, with no compromising, no need to ration my energy, no forced connection, no avoidance or dance-arounds disagreements, just peace. If that meant solitude on a controversial holiday — so be it. 

Cause here’s the deal: the person that gets you out of any discomfort, danger or close-call is no one but: you. Even if a situation turned a way you’d never anticipated, bringing on consequences you never imagined, you do have the power to get out of it. What I’m getting at is not escapism — what I’m getting at is a firm foundation of mindset. When you approach life, which means any problem or scenario with the mindset of, “I can figure it out.” You will — always. Sometimes that figuring it out may look like giving things up that don’t work. It means letting go, it means solitude on a holiday when you would have liked company, but the company came with too high price of an emotional-burden tax. That’s still figuring it out. That’s competency. That’s confidence. That’s going your own way. 

Just ask yourself: 

Who was the person to ask if you could do it?

Who was the person that got yourself where you needed to go in a moment of uncertainty, threat, or danger?

Who was the person to press pause before you continued?

Who was the person showing up for you?

You. 

The problem I think we have, if you’re someone here reading and resonating with this, is we do not give ourselves enough credit. We have too harsh an inner-critic, and we have not yet learned how to love ourselves on a foundational level. 

Where love is: 

-Patient

-Kind

-Does not envy

-Does not boast

-Is not proud (arrogant)

-Does not dishonor others

-Is not self-seeking

-Is not easily angered

-Keeps no record of wrongs

-Does not delight in evil

-Rejoices with the truth

-Always protects

-Always trusts

-Always hopes

-Always perseveres

And here is the thing about loving others. It starts with yourself. 

So are you patient with yourself? 

Are you kind to yourself? 

Do you envy others?

Do you boast about yourself?

Are you arrogant?

Do you dishonor others for selfish gain/ego boosting?

Are you easily angered?

Do you keep record of wrongs as your cornerstone, as your defiant hill to avoid living life? Or avoid your calling?

Do you delight/flirt with evil?

Do you rejoice with the truth?

Do you always protect, trust, hope and persevere? 

I know that’s a lot to reflect on, but really? Complaining won’t ever accomplish anything. Doing something about your frustration will. You know how frustrating it is to have just faced a near-death experience and have your friends and family flat-out belittle and disregard you? It’s extremely frustrating. It’s isolating and yes, suffocating — because your truth isn’t being rejoiced. You’re not being trusted, you’re not being protected, you’re not being honored; you’re not being loved. And while this sort of scenario makes you feel incapable and small, heres’ what you can do: show people the respect you deserve, the honor you deserve, the love you deserve, by providing it for yourself. If you’re done compromising and settling, make the commitment to yourself that if others don’t make room for your loss/abuse/trauma when you speak up and share it with them, they don’t make room for you. It’s your job to choose you. 

Tough pill to swallow, I know. But we’re not meant to live with lies — they deteriorate your mind and spirit. Every day I’m here, I know it’s by a miracle that I’m alive. This goes for any other childhood abuse survivor out there, even if you struggle with narcissism — you have been sustained because there is true life for you ahead. Life while protecting a lie, even if you are unaware you are doing so, that’s not life, that’s a prison cell. If people are expecting and even asking you to lie to yourself about your abuse/trauma, leave them. To lie is the origid of all evil. So when you lie about the reality and severity of impact from your experience, you enable abuse to continue and betray yourself. Not because you want to, but because that’s just how it works. Nothing good will come from expending your energy with people who ask you to lie. If you’re the one lying, you have to learn to embrace change and stop. It is better to live in solitude than to have one’s spirit devoured by the darkness of a lie, protected through conformity. Choose yourself. Go your own way. Find the people that would never force a lie onto you. Let the one’s who endorsed any lie, do their own work without you paying the tax while they figure it out. Because they can figure it out — if they want to. 

-B

*This post should be read through a trauma-informed, humanitarian lens. If you don’t know what this means, please expand your understanding of trauma and equity.