I was definitely the black sheep of the family.
Not in the rebellious, dramatic kind of way but in the I made choices no one really understood kind of way.
I walked away from the “good” path. Said yes to things that didn’t line up on paper. Said no to things that others would’ve killed for.
I’ve made bold choices. Quiet ones. Beautiful ones. And yes, my fair share of messy, not-so-great ones too.
But here’s the thing:
They were mine.
And that alone made them sacred.
Still, when you live this way, when you start honoring your own path instead of following the one laid out for you people will talk.
They’ll say things like:
“Oh, but you had such a stable career.”
“Oh, but you always said that was your dream.”
“Oh, but you’ve changed…”
And they’re not wrong.
I did change. I had no choice when I started my reclamation journey.
Here’s what I know… Their “Oh, but…” Chorus was never about me. It was about their own comfort. Their own lens. Their own fear that maybe, just maybe, they’re overdue for a change themselves.
And when those voices got loud, I had to learn the one thing that saved me:
Self-knowing, self-trust and self-acceptance. ALL the “selfs”.
The self that whispers, “I know who I am, even if you don’t understand me right now.”
Because when you know who you are, when you’ve done the work to peel back the layers, listen to your body,
and reclaim your own truth you don’t need everyone else to approve.
You stop outsourcing your decisions to people who were never meant to carry your dreams. You stop explaining your growth to people who preferred you smaller. You stop waiting for applause for a life only you were meant to live.
Let them say, “Oh, but you…”
You say, “Yes. And I trust who I am reclaiming.”
Even the decisions that looked reckless led me somewhere. Even the “wrong” turns taught me something true.
And with every step, I reclaimed myself. Not perfectly (definitely not perfectly) but fully.
If you’ve been the black sheep, the outlier, the misunderstood one, I want you to know: You’re not broken. You’re brave.
You are the one who said yes to reclamation and that matters more than they’ll ever know.
Photo by Colin Michael on Unsplash