Less and letting go.

This year has been full of change for me, full of new beginnings. I feel different, I think I look a bit different, and I have most certainly been surrounding myself with different people. I've heard a lot of comments lately, from people I have known for a long time, that I have changed myself so much that they hardly recognize me anymore. To that I really want to just say, have you ever really even LOOKED at me before? My sister put it best when she told me she thinks I have just gotten back to being the 'me' she always knew I was.
I think we all have set ideas of how we want to project out into the world, how we want others to view us. Everyone does change over time, but at the core? That core remains, it just gets covered up by the various versions of ourselves we try on.
That is what happened to me.
When asked to describe who I am, I often find myself going back to when I was in preschool, and yelling at a group of boys for hitting a tree and ripping its branches off. I was so upset that anyone would want to hurt a tree, let alone my peers, that my eyes were stinging with tears as I shouted at them to be nice. I just wanted everyone to be nice, including myself.
This encounter went on to color almost all my interactions with others for most of my life. Being 'nice' morphed into me becoming the type of person that was a punching bag for others, quiet about my beliefs because they were not what everyone else deemed to be 'nice'. Everyone else. The strong little girl that didn't care about what others thought as long as she was fighting for what is right became entrenched in pleasing everyone else and never ever rocking the boat.
Being nice put a rose colored tint on all my relationships. I thought the best of people even they were stealing from me and lying to my face; when I was being taken advantage of in the worst ways and even when I was assaulted. Everyone in my life deserved love and kindness in my eyes. Even when they refused to show any to me. Forgiveness is good, forgetting is better. Being alone is worse than being walked all over. I owed them all my 'nicest' version of myself, whoever that happened to be at the time.
Somewhere inside I think that little girl was raging when everything came to a head before my wedding. I was getting married. It felt like a slate was being wiped clean. I had found someone who loved ME, the real me and now I had to figure out who she really was. That little girl was whispering to me from somewhere in my heart, daring me to come and find her again.
 I went through an intense healing process with a very gifted seer, who helped me to peel back the layers and meet myself once again. I had come full circle and right back to my core. And you know what? She's nice, but she's also kind to herself first. As I started to notice the toxicity in myself, I noticed it in other areas of my life and was able to start shedding those too. I became lighter as I left the things and people who no longer served me behind. I was obsessed with feeling lighter and being simpler, being less. I also realized people that I wasn't healthy for either, and let go of them with no thoughts of regret or worry of what they would think of me. I found my voice again, and it is strong.
I have always liked the saying, 'What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.' I had allowed being well received and liked become more important than what is right. My strong sense of the 'golden rule' didn't extend to myself or to those who it wasn't popular to treat well. You will no longer find me placing your feelings above what I know is the right thing to do, or lying to you about what I think in order for you to like me. That woman is gone. I have let her go.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson