Finding your true self sometimes means leaving the group behind

Belonging to yourself can mean having to leave old group identities behind you.

We all have them, those relationships from our past versions of ourselves.

Some of them were wonderful at one point in our lives, and helped us grow or stretch ourselves, as good relationships will do. Some we outgrew, feeling as if the containers holding these old friendships had gotten too tight for our new growth.

We needed to leave them behind so we could find who we are now. This doesn’t mean they weren’t valuable to us, or that we necessarily left how we felt about them behind.

This past week, I dreamed of old friends, and a few memories popped up out of nowhere, some of them fun and happy, and a few that were painful. The painful ones I dealt with as best I could, letting go of any leftover toxic energies from punishing and invalidating situations and people.

Sometimes I remember old friends and relationships out of the blue, and it makes me smile - ‘Remember when I did that? That version of me was creating this way? I knew these people, they were my social group then?!’. The older I get, the more this kind of thing pops up, with me suddenly wondering ‘where is so and so these days? I hope they’re well!’’.

Sometimes I send them an energetic thank you, even if I have no desire to see them again, because they helped me grow in some way. As I did for them.

Even if we don’t speak to or see each other often, some people I’ve known in my life are still in my thoughts. I’ve curated my friends group carefully over the years. There are people I want around me, people I love to talk to, people I laugh with, create with, celebrate with.

The only people I have no interest in seeing at all are the ones who simply won’t or can’t see the me that I am, now. Also those who cannot seem to have actual conversations, because they are performing monologues. I am so bored with this.

Blast from the past - this version of me hanging out at a friend’s birthday party by the Pacific Ocean, 2018?

Leaving out of date versions of you in the past

It can be a lonely road at times, the road to find yourself.

Even with incredibly supportive loving people around, and I hope you have some, each of us is really on our own path. And we have to be doing it ourselves if we are going to find the truth of who we are. This means that other people’s opinions are not needed when it comes to us deciding who we really are.

(Yes, we really have to do this part ourselves.)

So at some point, this means having to cut old ties and cords, and leave behind the versions of ourselves that are tethered to the past.

Those old selves helped us become who we are. It’s fun to revisit them, and I believe it’s necessary to validate them. I look back at times when I had no idea I was actually good at what I was doing, because I was so invalidated and needing approval from others more than I knew how to have it myself. Ugh.

Those are both happy and painful memories to revisit, and all of them are necessary. I see old photos and remember the emotions and excitement, the memories from different events, the people I knew and don’t anymore because we’ve all grown into new versions of ourselves. The time we knew each other was perfect then, and it’s over now.

We all belong to many groups, and we have changed group affiliations many times in our lives. Groups are how we humans connect, whether it’s a group composed of family, workmates, school friends, a bookclub, a volunteer group, parents, neighbors, city, state, country - you name it and there is a group, or several for it.

Groups can help us accomplish things we want and grow, and help support us in some crucial way. But if you stay in a group you’ve outgrown, it will hold you back. This doesn’t mean the group is necessarily bad, just that it’s not good for you anymore.

One thing that never works well for having your spiritual growth, is giving all of your loyalty to a group you belong to, rather than to yourself. If you allow the group to decide whether you can change or become who you are trying to be, you won’t have the space or freedom to become that.

If you feel guilty or afraid to leave a group, friendship, or relationship, or to create new boundaries within any of them, you won’t stretch yourself to find your new size and shape. If other people you’re connected to don’t want you to grow, and you don’t have permission and space to grow, you won’t be able to do it.

You are the artist of yourself

Ultimately, it is you who gets to choose who you want to be. You get to decide which version of you that you are right now. This is where you find your freedom and your responsibility.

We need each other, we need the connections and love, the communication and validation, the healing and giving, all of this comes from being human. The spirit to spirit communication we can have with each other is priceless.

But we still cannot create each other. We each must do this part ourselves. It all begins with us, getting to know the most important person you know - yourself. This is who you came here to be.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. — Carl Jung