Episode 4: Choosing Yourself Without An Apology

THE FINAL EPISODE IS HERE

Episode 4: Choosing Yourself Without An Apology

What happens when you stop apologising for choosing yourself?

After four deeply personal conversations, I close this series not with the pain of what happened, but with the possibility of what comes next.

I've spoken about leaving.

I've spoken about what my body carried.

I've spoken about the cost of staying too long.

Now, I want to speak about reclaiming yourself.

Choosing your peace.

Choosing your joy.

Choosing your boundaries.

Choosing your voice.

Choosing rest.

Choosing a life that doesn't require you to abandon yourself to belong.

This final episode is about clearing space for the next season, forgiving yourself for staying, releasing what no longer serves you, and allowing yourself to dream again. Choosing yourself isn't selfish and you don't need to apologise for protecting your wellbeing.

You can take the wisdom without taking the wound.

As we close this chapter, I leave you with the question that started it all:

Where is your heart today?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Greetings, beloved. Where is your heart today? Welcome to the final episode in this series. Over the past three weeks we've walked through some very difficult, deeply personal territory together. In episode one, why physically removing yourself matters, I shared why I eventually recognized that I needed to leave a space that I once loved so much. In episode two, when your body keeps the score, I began to understand what my body had been carrying, and why leaving physically didn't mean that my body immediately felt safe. And in episode three, the cost of staying too long, I confronted what staying had actually cost me, my health, my confidence, my creativity, my joy, my sense of self, and at times my ability to trust my own instincts. Today we arrive at the final chapter: choosing yourself without an apology. This episode is slightly different because I don't want to end this series with what happened to me. I want to end it with what I choose now. It's all about reclaiming myself, about clearing the space, about making room for what comes next, and about learning that choosing yourself definitely does not require an apology. You see, for a very long time, I thought choosing myself meant that somebody else had to lose. If I said no, I was letting someone down. If I walked away, I was giving up. If I protected my peace, I wasn't committed enough. If I prioritized my well-being, I was simply just being selfish. And if I stopped carrying something that was hurting me, I wondered whether I had failed. But I understand something differently now. Choosing myself doesn't mean choosing against everyone else. It means I have finally included myself into the equation of my life. And that may sound simple, but for many of us, especially women, particularly black women, queer women, that act can be quite revolutionary. You see, for centuries we've been taught to give, to nurture, to accommodate, to understand, to forgive, to be quiet, to stand up, to speak, to hold space, to keep going. But who holds that space for us? Who asks us what we actually need? Who tells us that we don't have to earn rest? Who reminds us that our well-being is not the price we have to pay for being committed to a cause? I'm now going into a space that shows the difference between fighting for something and fighting against yourself. And I don't want to fight against myself anymore. I certainly don't want to spend another season trying to convince people of my worth. Because the beauty is, I know who I am. I know what I've done, I know what I've brought to the table, I know what I've left on the table. And I'm finally learning to let that be enough. There's another part of choosing yourself that we don't talk about enough. You have to make space. You see, sometimes we keep asking for new things to enter our lives while holding on tightly onto whatever we actually need to leave behind. We want new relationships, but we're still emotionally attached to relationships that exhausted us. We want new opportunities, but we're still carrying the fear of the fear we created by the last environment. We want creativity, but we're filling every quiet moment with noise. We want peace, but we're still checking those messages, watching for reactions, monitoring what people are saying. So sometimes the next season requires clearing. Not because everything in the past was bad, but because it served its purpose. And I know that that can be quite difficult to accept. Because sometimes we're not only leaving people, we're leaving versions of ourselves. For me, it's the version who taught me that I had to endure everything. The version who believed that being strong meant never admitting I was tired. The version that I thought I had to explain myself until everybody understood. The version who believed that if I wasn't working hard enough, loved hard enough, gave hard enough, someone would eventually recognize my value. I'm no longer that woman. And I don't say this with shame. I say it with tenderness, with love and pride. As it's that it's that woman that got me here. She survived. She did what she knew what she had to do. She protected me. She kept going. And now I can thank her and let her rest. There's so much freedom in that. Forgive myself for staying, for ignoring the signs, for making excuses, for second-guessing myself, for not leaving sooner. For believing that I could somehow change a system that was making me so unwell. For believing that my endurance was evidence of my strength. I forgive myself. Because I know now what I didn't know then. And that is what growth is. We don't need to punish our former selves for not having the information we have today. But what we can do is we can learn, we can grow, we can choose differently, we can move forward. I also want to reclaim something else. Joy. Not performative joy, not pretending everything is alright, but real, real joy. The kind that uh catches you by surprise or makes you laugh until your stomach hurts or splurts out water through your nose whilst you're drinking and you find something humorous. Creating something because you want to, or listening to music that just makes you dance, sitting in the sun, having a conversation that you don't leave, that doesn't leave you depleted or tired or drained. The joy that comes from working with people who inspire you, who allow you to dream again. Allowing yourself to imagine a future that isn't organized around recovering from the past. That for me is part of healing. Not simply becoming less hurt, but becoming more alive. And perhaps that is what the next season is for me. Not proving, not performing, not explaining, not surviving, allowing change, but simply living, living with intention, choosing where my energy goes, choosing who has access to me, choosing the work that I want to do, choosing the relationships that nourish me, choosing rest, joy, orgasms, myself, laughter, and all of that, choosing it without an apology. My beloveds, I want to leave you with something. If you've been listening to the series and recognizing yourself in my story, remember you don't have to leave today. You don't have to make the dramatic decision because someone on the podcast told you. Listen to your body, listen to your intuition, listen to the exhaustion, listen to the resentment, listen to the joy that disappears when you enter certain spaces, listen to the version of yourself that keeps whispering, this isn't right for me anymore. And then ask yourself, what would choosing myself look like today? Perhaps it's a boundary or a conversation or asking for help or resting or leaving, whatever the answer is, honor it. It is yours, and it is valid. You most certainly don't have to justify your own humanity. You do not have to prove that you're strong enough to survive another painful season, and you do not have to keep suffering simply because you have survived suffering before. Because strength isn't measured by how much suffering you can survive. Sometimes strength is saying enough. Sometimes it is walking away, resting, honoring yourself, asking for help. And sometimes strength is simply choosing yourself without an apology.