What if I stay?

Lately, I’ve been noticing a familiar pattern — one that shows up in my work, my relationships, and where I call home. I’m never sure if it’s born from my adventurous spirit, the part of me that craves newness and possibility… or from the quieter part that feels safer running when things get hard. The part that fears what might happen if I stay — to sit in what feels heavy or uncertain, or even to let something deepen, stretch, or succeed beyond what I imagined.

We’ve been in Florida now for almost 2.5 years, in our house for 2 years. That seems to be the timeline for my internal clock to start alerting me that change is needed and settling doesn’t feel right. So I’ve been hyper-focusing on the shortcomings and overlooking the gifts of living here.

Similarly, Root Collective is approaching its one year anniversary. We’ve created something beautiful and sustainable and yet, I’ve felt myself feeling that itch recently to completely revamp it and build again. Looking for signs that things aren’t going well and that change is needed.

Feeling so unsettled in these two huge areas of my life, where I live and my business, has wrapped me in a thick fog over the last few weeks. I’ve been desperate for answers, hating living in the in-between, the messy middle, the muck. I wish I could say that I lovingly befriended this fog and used somatics to ground myself through it, but that would be a lie. I was bracing through the whole process—googling new places to live, ChatGPTing new business plans—all to feel the relief of clarity again.

Because I process things externally, I know I can’t make decisions by thinking through them alone. I need to speak them aloud and receive feedback, marinate on that feedback, and then ultimately take what aligns and leave behind what doesn’t.

So I started with a conversation with my kids about the idea of moving. Did they miss snow? Did they miss winter? What if we found a place that still had seasons but wasn’t as cold as the Northeast? My daughter jumped right on that bandwagon yelling, “can we move tomorrow!?” I knew she would be just as happy to stay as she would be to go. My son, however, my little sensitive soul, responded with “I am not going anywhere. Please stop talking about changing things, it makes me feel angry when you bring these things up. I am happy here, I have memories here and in our house. I don’t want to leave.” I could immediately feel the anxiety stirring in my own body. If he doesn’t want to move, and he feels that passionate about it… then I can’t move. But holy crap, that means I am stuck. The suffocation of monotony started to creep in. Could I keep things the same for the next 10+ years? Did I love Florida THAT much?

At the same time, I was seeking clarity on Root Collective. So, I started talking with a few members about some ideas I had to change things up. I thought they were good ideas, I do still think they were good ideas, but they would change a bit of the energy of what I created. As I processed out my thoughts, they each responded with a really gentle way of essentially saying, “yes, these are cool ideas… but…. please don’t change anything big. Just leave things as they are.” Again, this felt really confronting. Don’t change it? But that’s what I do.

I’ve felt dysregulated about this for the last few days. These relationships in my life, all of whom I trust, value, and take feedback to heart with— who are typically loving mirrors: my children, trusted friends, community members— all were asking me not to change things. I didn’t want that to be the answer. I wanted them to encourage me in my efforts to begin anew.

So, I sat with that. I didn’t like the answers but I knew they were valid. So I kept sitting.

Then, I woke up this morning with a realization.

This is fear. I’m scared of the unknown of staying, of seeing something through when things aren’t perfect.

Through this lens, I realized, my work is in releasing (our word of the week in RC) the patterns and beliefs that taught me to jump ship when things are hard because there’s always something better out there to chase instead.

And quite frankly, life has been hard lately. I took over a studio space with more overhead and I am left wondering each month if I can actually do this. If what I’ve created is solid enough to support a level of overhead that I’ve never had in any business model before. Do enough people want RC the way it is to make it sustainable in the long run. Can I afford this? Was it a big mistake? Sitting in the fear is uncomfortable, so my brain wants to find a way out by generating new ideas and solutions to pivot and begin again.

And living in Florida has been hard too. The last two years we’ve experienced more loss and more big, stressful experiences than we ever have as a couple and family. And in all that sadness, all that uncertainty, I realized I don’t want to sit in it. I want to dream up some place new that will put an end to all the things that have been hard and will gift us a fresh start.

So I realized this morning that in this season of my life (and probably in others), the need for change is being born more from fear than from misalignment. And, I also realized how much relationship played a role in helping to highlight this for me and guide me out of this familiar pattern.

If I had received ‘permission’ or a ‘blessing’ from those I talked to, I would have continued on with my normal pattern to shake things up, to start planning how I could begin again in all areas of my life. But I didn’t get that. And in doing so, these relationships became a mirror to my own shadow part: the part that wants to leave when things get hard. The survival response to flee, the belief that it is safer to abandon ship than it is to ride the waves until it’s calm again.

These mirrors lovingly (or more bluntly in my son’s case) asked me to stay, not to run, to see it through. At first these responses were so counter to my way of being that it caused me to go into a spiral deeper into the fog. But when I woke up this morning, I could start to see some clarity.

What if I stayed? What if nothing big changed? What if I just had to ride this out? Break this pattern? Shed this habit? What if this is a mirror for me to release this survival response that has been holding me back from my own growth for so much of my life.

What if I stay?