10.20.21 // To Be Understood

"It is no longer your responsibility to be understood."
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How freeing.
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As many of you know, I love Glennon Doyle's book Untamed. In one of her chapters, she talks about how her family unit is like an island and it is a safe place for her family to just exist in the way that works for them.
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Glennon talks about how she let others who brought anxiety or fear onto her family's island for a while. She talks about how she had to make strong boundaries to protect her family unit and to keep the drawbridge up to keep her family from suffering from that anxiety and fear that others who didn't understand, accept, or respect the way her family unit worked were bringing.
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Glennon also talks about how, for a long time, she would leave the island to go out and be a missionary for her cause, to explain her family unit and justify to others their existence and choices. She wrote about how exhausting it was to go out and "defend" the island even though it didn't need to be defended, explained, or understood for her family to exist on it in a healthy and happy manner.
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This chapter I have read and re-read, and every time it holds the reminder of how freeing it is if you just stop trying to take responsibility to have others understand you and stop trying to explain boundaries as if they need some form of justification.
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I live a "non-traditional life" in a lot of respects and because of that, I spend an outrageous amount of time justifying why I am doing what I'm doing, explaining why and how and what it all means. Needing someone to validate MY LIFE.
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Even if I lived a more traditional lifestyle, I think I would still justify myself in my choices because needing others to understand has always felt like it weighs on my shoulders, but it doesn't. Other people's opinions and understanding are not my responsibility.
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My only responsibility is to myself and my island, to own my truth, to protect my island from the intrusive emotions of others, and to calmly sit on the island and enjoy my time here instead of telling others how great it is that I'm here.
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It's a tall order for a perfectionist wanting validation, but a freeing act if I can learn to master it.