Oh How My Blunders Have Taught Me

At this point, I should probably start a punch card for how many times I’ve turned away from my inner knowing and walked straight into a disaster disguised as a life lesson.

What can I say?
Some people ignore a gut feeling once or twice.
I prefer to ignore it five or six times, spiral a bit, develop a weird rash, cry in the bathtub, and then finally admit, “Oh. I knew.”

This is not a confession. This is a love letter to the most painful, beautiful, wildly unnecessary ways I’ve abandoned myself and the slow, sacred practice of coming back.

When love meant losing myself

Let’s talk about the mother wound or, in plain English, what happens when you’re trained to prioritize other people’s emotions over your own sense of reality.

I learned early on to read the room, manage the mood, keep the peace. That skill kept me safe, but it also buried my voice under layers of “Is this okay?” and “What do you need from me?” I didn’t even realize I was missing until I started to reclaim myself in therapy, in stillness, in grief.

For years, I mistook over-functioning for love and obligation for connection. But here’s the truth I now know deep in my bones:

When we’re not allowed to trust our own instincts as kids, we grow up outsourcing everything: our choices, our worth, our boundaries.

Coming back to myself has meant learning to disappoint others instead of betraying myself. Still not always easy. Still always worth it.

When a job looks safe but feels like a slow death

I stayed in a career for way too long because it looked stable on the outside, and I didn’t know I was allowed to leave something that was “fine.”

But every time I walked into that building, something in me went quiet. That was my inner knowing folding in on itself like a small animal.

I pushed through. Smiled on Zoom. Wrote policies. Ignored the slow, creeping dread. Then came the panic attacks. The random tears in the grocery store. The thousand-yard stare over my keyboard.

Turns out, “It’s not that bad” is not the same as “It’s good for me.”
Turns out, the soul has a way of whispering, and then screaming when we ignore it long enough.

When effort replaces self-trust

Here’s a classic mistake of mine: trying to earn peace through performance. I thought if I just tried hard enough, showed up for everyone, stayed strong, I’d eventually feel safe.

But instead, I just burned out. Again and again. I'm confused being capable with being okay. I overrode every warning bell inside me in the name of “not being a burden.”

But here’s the thing: when we stop trusting ourselves, we start performing for love instead of receiving it.

That’s when the blunders come. That’s when the grief hits. That’s when we wake up and ask, “How did I get so far from myself?”

When calm feels unfamiliar

You’d think peace would feel amazing. But for people who’ve lived in survival mode, peace can feel… weird. Untrustworthy. Like something’s wrong.

That’s what happened to me. I made the right choices, left the job, set boundaries, and donated the bikinis, yet I still felt like I had done something wrong.

Because peace felt like an absence. And I didn’t know how to sit in the absence without trying to fill it.

But here’s what I’m learning:

Just because something feels unfamiliar doesn’t mean it’s unsafe.
Sometimes your nervous system is just meeting calm for the first time.
And it’s allowed to take a minute. Sometimes doubt doesn’t mean don't, it means take a damn pause.

The real lesson in every blunder

If there’s a theme in all this, the job, the family dynamics, the nervous breakdowns, it’s this:

Every time I turned away from myself, I felt it.
In my body.
In my bones.
In the slow ache that always said, “This isn’t it.”

But I kept going anyway. Because I was scared. Because I wanted approval. Because I thought “trying harder” would fix the ache.

It never did.

But you know what? Every one of those moments eventually brought me back bruised, tired, a little feral but more honest than I’d ever been.

And now?

Now I ask, “What part of me is trying to speak?” before I bulldoze through it.
Now I pause before making choices from fear.
Now I trust that the body knows before the brain does.

I’m not saying I don’t still make chaotic decisions.
I do. I’m human.
But now? I’m listening. I’m staying. I’m learning to trust the voice inside me even when it whispers.

Especially when it whispers.