I get love by pleasing other people. It’s my little trick. If I make enough people happy enough of the time (all people all of the time), I won’t be alone, at least I’ll be able to tell myself I’m not alone, or I think that was the plan.

I feel a sense of power in my solar plexus. For once, I shed my hummingbird-soft voice. I firmly speak my actual truth, the one that flings open the door to uncertainty. And I know that in this moment I love myself and I am only letting myself be loved by others who actually love Me.

The journey from people-pleasing to self-determination requires a blind leap for those whose experience was never of being loved as just who they are. How does this work? I don’t give them what they want? I don’t cave? I disappoint them? And how can this go well?

But with that leap I feel a nurturing embrace from deep in my own body. A deep gratefulness for finally introducing myself. An embrace that makes losing another’s a little less scary.

And after it all, someone sees me, maybe for the first time, and for some reason they still want to embrace me. Maybe even tighter now.

And their embrace means more, and so does my own embrace glowing warm deep in my core. It’s a truth, a being seen, an authenticity I don’t ever want to bury again. And it’s better.

Who are you when you speak from your core?