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When I was growing up, I was a people pleaser. I was so well behaved, so reserved, so worried about my actions upsetting or - worse - letting others down. Things changed in my 20s and then in my 30s. When I was 24, my mum passed away, unexpectedly. It made me realise how fragile life was, and to finally see that I had only one life myself, and it was short, and I had to chose whether I lived it for myself, to be happy as my mum would have wanted me to be, or remain a wallflower and spend my only life only pleasing others and regretting all the opportunities missed when I was in my death bed. I still struggled to find the way to be my true self, the long life habit is not easy to break. Then I read somewhere a sentence that stuck in my head and shook me to the core. It said something along the lines "You shouldn't worry about what others think about you, they are too absorbed in their own worries about what others think about them to give you a second thought". And then it all clicked together. Of course, I simplify, it took time. But now I look at my former self and see a different person. It's a shame that it took me to lose my mum to allow myself to seek happiness.

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