Everyone else’s—advice, experience, energy, emotions—is theirs. And it’s just that. Theirs. And it doesn’t have to be yours. It doesn’t have to be yours to take on, to do, to become. Everybody is different. Every body is different. Reflect on your boundary; set your boundary; be in your boundary. Exhale, gaze outside, meditate, take your space, put down your phone. Boundaries are a concentration of power.
And! Everyone else’s—beauty, intelligence, success, magnetism and magnificence is also theirs. And it shouldn’t be yours. Because you have yours. And them having theirs doesn’t diminish or detract from yours, doesn’t make it any less. In fact, it makes it more special. It guides you to lean more into yourself; the ways you, specifically, as yourself, are blessed.
This doesn’t have to be yours, either. You can read it; you can be with it; you can leave it. You don’t have to take anything with you except what’s yours. And even that, you can leave, too.
Written on the day of the Leo New Moon from 34-year-old me to 14 -year-old me, and for all the years in between, and probably for moments to come, too. Because it’s taken time with myself and with wonderful, strong, supportive and celebratory friends, and reading things like Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World for Men* that have helped me to open my eyes and arms to all that is mine.
(*So many years of following food, fitness, medical advice just for and by men, like all of “biohacking,” for example, that did not serve me at all and actually hurt me at points and that’s OK, because we’re here now and stronger, more self-assured and understood now.)