MY Boundary - I Don't Want to Be Anyone's ONLY

Only is such a small word.

Only friend.

Only source.

Only support.

Only connection.

Only answer.

Only person who understands.

Only suggests scarcity. As if there isn't enough.

Enough people.

Enough love.

Enough support.

Enough knowledge.

Enough possibility.

I don't want to be anyone's ONLY.

My only ONLY's are what I choose NOW.

I don't want anyone (but my husband) to be mine. 😏

That might sound strange coming from someone who teaches connection, curiosity, exploration and the movement of energy through time.

But it is actually the opposite.

I don't WANT people to need me.

Need, like only, implies scarcity.

That is, literally, WHY I do what I do.

Feeling unwanted made me feel NEEDY.

So I discerned who and what I NEEDED from what I WANTED

And realized that I have always had everything I needed.

What I needed was to feel wanted.

So, I teach invitation.

Look.

Explore.

Get curious.

Ask another question.

Try something different.

Notice what happens.

Not only knowledge, but the application of it.

Not only energy, but its flow, no matter which direction that flow takes.

If I became your only source of perspective, support, connection or answers, I would be contradicting everything I teach.

I don't want to be the person you have to come back to because you can't move without me.

I want to be someone who helped you discover that YOU can.

If I died tomorrow, I know I would be missed.

But would you need to replace me?

Or have you heard enough of what I've said, about the concepts I teach, about the conversations we've had, about your own life, to LIVE it?

That is what I want to know.

Did I help you gain access to parts of your own world?

Did something I said give you another question?

Another possibility?

Another way to look at something you thought you already understood?

Did you begin trusting your own ability to figure things out?

Because the world I see begins with me.

I changed MY world.

I can't change YOUR world until and unless YOU do.

The world YOU see begins with YOU.

Can you see that now?

If you can, I can rest peacefully when I go.

That is a very different kind of legacy than being needed.

I know something about needing people.

When I was younger, I wanted to know that I mattered.

I wanted to know that something I said mattered.

Everything. Anything.

I asked questions in real life that people often wouldn't answer.

For a long time, it came out as needy.

It was.

I needed validation.

I eventually realized that what I was really trying to understand was something else.

Are you learning?

Are you curious?

Are you exploring your own life?

Or are you resisting stepping into some part of it?

Tell me what's stopping you from becoming who you are and I'll challenge EVERY excuse.

Not confrontationally.

Exploratively.

What if it happened?

What if it worked?

What would you do if things went right?

Most people prepare for the worst.

I want to be prepared for opportunity.

To me, the worst isn't that something unexpected happens.

The worst is being unprepared when life happens.

I am okay with whatever IS.

That doesn't mean I don't startle or stew.

It means I don't worry about something already in motion.

What is already in motion will happen whether I worry about it or not.

What isn't yet in motion is, literally, up to me and my energy.

That distinction has changed a lot for me.

Including how I see connection.

Two of the most important people in my life demonstrate very different relationships with it.

One resists connection, protecting something from the past.

Another desperately wanted connection for a very long time and has described parts of his own mind as being behind a wall.

One pulls away.

One reaches.

Both are learning.

Both are becoming.

And both remind me that connection isn't something I can MAKE happen for another person.

I can invite.

I can explore.

I can ask.

I can listen.

I can offer perspective.

I can love.

But I cannot do someone else's connecting for them.

And I don't want to.

That would make me their ONLY.

My son recently told me something I hadn't quite seen for myself.

I appreciate LOUDLY.

Apparently, I can appreciate something so enthusiastically that another person can walk away feeling like they don't appreciate it enough.

That matters.

Because it can make it harder for someone to tell me when they're having a challenge unless they NEED my perspective.

His need for independence is strong.

And I understand it.

Need has been a trigger for him.

He is working toward a life that feels more like his own.

That's progress.

It also makes me wonder about myself.

A friend recently asked me if I am able to turn off the analytical thinking.

Can I quiet my mind? I meditate.

But this analytical curiosity comes with connection.

Someone tells me something and my mind wants to explore it.

What happened?

What does it mean?

What else could be happening?

What haven't we considered?

What happens next?

That is part of how I connect.

But someone else's experience doesn't automatically become mine to analyze simply because I can see possibilities.

That is another boundary.

Sometimes my curiosity belongs to me.

Sometimes the invitation is simply:

I'm here if you want to explore it.

I recently found out I'm an aunt.

My niece may not particularly appreciate me right now.

I challenged some of her self-limiting beliefs.

She had just met me.

Fair enough.

My four-year-old granddaughter, whom I also only recently met face-to-face, is already calling to tell me she misses me.

Yesterday, she invited me to the zoo.

Apparently, after I left, she wouldn't let anyone sit in "Grandma's seat" for almost two months.

I live twelve hours away.

People are going to connect with me differently.

Some will want more.

Some will want less.

Some will think I'm way out there.

Some will love exactly that about me.

Some people from my old life are still here.

Many aren't.

I understand most of those closed chapters.

Some people simply don't like who I became.

Some think I'm way out there.

That's okay.

My personality is BIG.

I like that.

I'm no longer making it small.

But I'm also not going to self-sabotage because someone doesn't want to answer my questions.

I have spent enough time wondering whether my way of seeing things is too much.

Now I'm more interested in whether it is useful.

My great aunt asked me what I wanted to be when I was eighteen.

She was a social worker, an author and a traveler.

She wanted me to spend my inheritance while she was alive so she could see what I did with it.

She paid for beauty school. It required 1,400 hours.

I completed more than 1,100 and then realized I didn't want to do it for a living.

Cue the song.

Beauty School Dropout.

She died at 100 and left me more.

Not life-changing money. Enough to do something with.

It sat in the bank. I didn't touch it until I was married and trying to chip in.

She wanted to see what I would do with what she gave me.

She couldn't decide for me.

She could only give.

I had to become.

I think about that now.

I finally know where I fit.

I finally know who I am.

This doesn't feel like an identity crisis anymore.

My husband and I called it that for a while.

It kind of was. But not really.

I didn't lose my identity.

I found it.

What I don't understand yet is why it sometimes feels like I'm a big secret.

Why does the world not know who I am when, in private, people LOVE me?

Why does being known seem so much harder than being loved?

Maybe that's another version of ONLY.

Maybe we sometimes expect one relationship, one person, one audience, one source of recognition to tell us where we stand.

As an employee, we may see or have one source of income.

I'm not asking for that anymore.

I am asking questions.

Some of them are very practical.

I am asking for my creditors.

For the people who provide services I use.

For the people to whom I owe money.

I'm asking because I have been asking and trying.

I'm out of time.

And being valuable and being compensated are not automatically the same thing.

I know that now.

I'm not currently in a position to be someone's sole source of income.

When I get there, I'll happily have conversations about how to make money work FOR them, if they want that.

But I don't want to be someone's sole source of support either.

That would contradict what I teach.

I want people to have options. Options come with connections.

Resources.

Questions.

Curiosity.

Their own answers.

Their own lives.

Their energy and intuition.

Maybe that's why the word ONLY bothers me.

It turns connection into scarcity.

It says: There is no one else.

There IS no other answer.

No other person.

No other possibility.

No other way.

I don't believe that.

I believe there is always something else to explore.

Sometimes the something else is another person.

Sometimes it's another perspective, another opportunity.

Sometimes it's your own memory, the thing you've been avoiding.

Sometimes it's simply the permission to ask a question you haven't asked yet.

I can love you without being your only person.

I can help you without becoming your solution.

I can know you without owning your story.

I can teach you without needing you to remain my student.

I can be your friend without becoming your entire world.

And you can need me without making your need my obligation.

That isn't disconnection.

That's room to breathe.

I don't want people to hide me.

I want people to KNOW me.

Not because I need to be shown off.

Not because I need, or even want, to be claimed.

But because I wonder what happens when we let the people we love be fully themselves in the lives we share.

Mom.

Wife.

Friend.

Daughter.

Sister.

Teacher.

Client.

Whatever the relationship is. What does it actually mean to YOU?

What part of me does that relationship have access to?

What part of YOU does it have access to?

What do you expect from that name? What have you decided it means?

And what happens when we stop treating a relationship as a permanent assignment of identity and start seeing it as a connection that is alive, moving and changing?

That question deserves its own conversation.

Maybe its own blog.

For now, I'll leave you with this:

If I died tomorrow, would you need me to come back?

Or would you realize that somewhere along the way, I helped you find something that was yours all along?

Because if you can carry that forward without me, then I wasn't your ONLY.

I was part of your abundance.

And that is exactly where I WANT to be.