Last weekend, I was with my two best friends from college. We do an annual trip that was famously saved in our phones over a decade ago, with the location “wherever we need to be to be together”. And that tagline has really held – we’ve stayed in one another’s apartments, at bougie resorts, and at graciously loaned homes and vacation rentals along the way.
The joke is always that we can walk and talk anywhere, so who cares where we go? This year, we were in the suburbs of Sacramento (Folsom, represent!).
We’ve done this trip for 11 years now – I think 12 if you count the kickoff… a couple days after graduation where we sat on the floor of my college rental and snacked on leftover charcuterie and wine from our parents (what a thing, to be 22!) for 3 days straight.
And in the early years, as fun as it was to be together at our annual reunion – we would all walk away from the weekend feeling a mix of emotions. We each named it in different ways (often after it had passed), but it was like being together, with people who started in similar places, and have known each other since, led us to compare constantly.
We had an amazing time on those trips – but we would come home with a bit of a hangover. We would hear about the priorities, values, moves, careers, spouses, and dreams of our friends and somehow their passion and updates would destabilize our own upon reentry into our own lives.
At the time, we could name it (and often did), but we didn’t know what to do with it.
And now, looking back on my 20s, I wonder if that insecurity and questioning is just a part of the process of becoming ourselves?
Maybe we need to try on the dreams and priorities of other women we respect in order to know what fits us, and what we can leave behind.
But the reason why I’m thinking of it now, is that in coming home from this weekend together, it’s the first time that I’ve not felt that tug at all.
One of my friends is in the early days of building a home on a farm. A FARM. How cool is that? She took us to the land, and we saw first hand (after many, many phone and photo reports) where her family is planting roots in a whole new way. And I didn’t walk away with a sense of sadness or “maybe we are doing it wrong”. Instead, I walked away excited for them and the dreams that are beginning to materialize. And, with the sense that now I share a vision for where life is taking them in the next decade… what a gift to be able to cheer our people on!
My other friend has chosen a lifestyle that’s super different than mine – she’s surrounded by family, grandparents who provide childcare, and a community that’s known her since she was an infant. And in the past, when she would share about it, I would feel a little ache – maybe a bit of, “Are we doing it wrong?”. The assumption of course being – that there is a right and wrong. But this year, after a particularly hard couple of months, I felt grateful that she has the support she has. That her team could rally around her effectively in a hard season, and that my role in that rally could be important, but just a piece of the puzzle that’s helping her heal.
Her choices have led her to a beautiful life. And I love that for her.
And, I also love my life for me.
- I love living in close proximity to the beach, wine country, and the city.
- I love the home that we live in – the routines we’re restarting as the days get longer – the muscle memory we’ve developed around habits and traditions, now that we’ve lived here three and a half years.
- I love my job and the career that I’ve carved out for myself – the clients that I get to work with and the schedule that comes with it.
- I love my crazy kiddos and the chaos that seems to follow us despite my best attempts at routine.
I was working out in the gym this morning – and instead of doing my normal routine, I was being humbled, on my mat, with no weights, doing breathing exercises. Because last week, I got reprimanded by my pelvic floor therapist (JK – Cassidy is the best) for some of the choices I’ve been making around movement in pregnancy, as I enter my 3rd trimester. And as I practiced the routine she’s set up for me, I looked next to me: there was a woman in what looked like her third trimester, absolutely killing it with large weights.
What a hero, am I right?
But instead of feeling insecure about my own abilities, I felt the same shift as with my friends – I can cheer on the woman next to me, without the need to compare myself. She’s a hero. And I am too – because I know what my body needs and I’m doing the thing I need to do to support it.
I wonder how much of letting go of comparison is just that:
- knowing what you want
- what your values are
- where God, the universe, or your life feels like its pulling you to.
Because once you have a sense of who you are, it becomes so much easier to let others be themselves.
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