During a network meeting, I was talking with a woman who told me she was thinking about giving away a dog she had recently adopted.
As a dog lover, I was concerned and asked her why.
I thought the issue was the dog.
It wasn’t.
She is married, has two teenage boys, and a full-time job. Once they got the dog, it became one more living thing depending on her.
As we talked, she became vulnerable and shared that she already felt like she was taking care of three children. The dog was the last straw.
The disappearing nobody talks about
I have seen something similar before. In the workshops I facilitate, I ask women a simple question: What makes you happy? What do you want?
Often the answers are about their kids, husbands, and family. Which is fine, but I was asking about them.
When I ask again, many go silent.
My thought is not that they don’t have dreams. I think sometimes those dreams have been pushed aside for so long they are no longer even part of the conversation they have with themselves.
It never happens all at once. It happens in small moments.
Until one day you realize you have somehow left yourself out of the picture.
What do I want now?
Then life changes.
Kids leave. A relationship ends. A career shifts or ends. And suddenly, a new space opens up.
What you thought would feel freeing can instead feel confusing, because now you’re faced with questions you may not have asked yourself in years.
You may not be able to answer: What do I want or What’s next?
Like, what’s next if you choose to make yourself a priority? Or what’s next when you stop living to please everyone else?
What’s crazy is that the ‘next’ can be uncomfortable and scary. It can fill one with anxiety because it requires stepping into the unknown.
I know this because not too long ago I had to step into that unknown myself. It was terrifying.
But I took the step.
Maybe you don’t need to have the answer to “What’s next?” yet.
Maybe the first step is simply getting curious about yourself again.
What do I want? What do I miss? What am I curious about now?
You don’t have to figure out your whole future. You just have to start including yourself in the conversation again.
What I am building
Right now, I’m still in that space in some areas of my life.
And the one thing I know with certainty is that I’m here to develop the Future Self-Portrait experience.
It is being created for that space where you know an old version of your life no longer fits, but you can’t clearly see what comes next.
The process uses reflection, imagination, and creativity to help bring that next version of yourself visible.
Soon I’ll be going through the entire process myself, and creating my own Future Self-Portrait.
I’m curious to see what becomes clearer when I stop trying to figure everything out only in my head and give it form I can actually see.
Maybe we don’t need to know exactly what comes next. Maybe we just need to start seeing ourselves in the possibilities again.
Where have you left yourself out of the picture?
