“When the dreamer evolves, so does the dream.” Lisa Watson
Hey friends 🩵
I realized something this week that surprised me.
For a long time, freedom meant something very specific to me. t meant working for myself.
It meant creating my own schedule.
It meant not having a boss—or living for a two-day weekend that unceremoniously ended on Sunday night, followed by that familiar resistance to Monday morning. Honestly, that was one of my favorite things about leaving the Monday-through-Friday world behind. It meant not punching a clock or having someone else determine when I worked or what my days looked like.
It meant building something that was mine.
And for a long time, I think I believed that moving away from that would somehow mean I had failed.
Like choosing a job, choosing structure, or choosing predictable hours would mean I was giving up on the life I had worked so hard to create.
But lately, I’ve started asking myself a different question:
What if freedom looks different now?
Because right now, do you know what sounds incredibly freeing to me?
Knowing when I need to work.
Knowing how much money I’m going to make this month.
Knowing when I’m off.
Being able to look at a yoga schedule and know which classes I can attend.
Making plans without wondering if someone is going to book something on my calendar.
Having consistent income that pays for my home, my food, my gas, and the life I want to live.
And then…going and living it.
There is something beautifully simple about that to me right now. Not constantly thinking:
- What do I need to create?
- What do I need to sell?
- Who do I need to reach?
- What needs to go out today?
- What am I behind on?
- What else should I be doing?
Instead, there is a part of me saying:
Go make your money. Take care of yourself. And then go enjoy your life.
And the best part is, I don’t feel like I’m abandoning myself!
I feel like I’m listening to myself.
That is a very different thing.
We talk so much about knowing ourselves. But knowing yourself isn’t just discovering who you are once and then building your entire life around that version of you. You keep changing.
- Your desires change.
- Your nervous system changes.
- Your priorities change.
- Your definition of success changes.
And sometimes the identity that once liberated you becomes the identity you feel obligated to maintain.
That’s where self-awareness becomes so important.
Because we can become just as attached to the identity of being “free” as we once were to the identity that kept us trapped.
We can turn entrepreneurship into another expectation. Healing into another expectation. Purpose into another expectation.Even our dreams can become expectations. And suddenly we aren’t asking ourselves what we actually want anymore. We’re asking:
What am I supposed to want based on the person I said I was becoming?
That’s a very different question.
There was a version of me who needed to prove that I could create something entirely on my own.
- She needed autonomy.
- She needed space.
- She needed to discover herself outside of the structures she had lived inside for decades.
And I am enormously grateful for her. She got me here. But I don’t have to keep making decisions for her. I get to make decisions for the woman I am today.
Maybe that means my business continues alongside something more stable.
Maybe it means I stop putting pressure on one part of my life to provide absolutely everything for me.
Maybe having structure in one area actually creates more freedom in another.
And maybe there isn’t one perfect version of what my life is supposed to look like.
That’s the piece I keep coming back to.
Know thyself.
- Not the self you were five years ago.
- Not the self you announced to the world you were going to become.
- Not the self your family expects.
- Not the self your business requires.
- Not even the self who had the dream.
- Who are you now?
- What does he/she need?
- What does he/she value?
- What feels spacious to him/her?
- What feels heavy?
- What is she ready to stop proving?
Because sometimes growth doesn’t look like pushing harder toward the life you imagined. Sometimes it looks like giving yourself permission to imagine a different one.
So here’s something to sit with this week:
Are you still building the life you want today… or are you still building the life a previous version of you decided you were supposed to want?
Maybe freedom hasn’t disappeared. Maybe it has simply changed shape.
With love,
P.S. This week’s episode of (re)Parenting Radio, Episode 52, is called “Know Thyself.” I’m exploring this idea even more deeply there—because the more we know ourselves beneath our conditioning, identities, roles, and expectations, the more consciously we get to choose what comes next.
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🎙️ Podcast: (re)Parenting Radio
