Do you love who you are when you’re with the people in your orbit?

When I was 16, heartbroken and sprawled on the floor in pajama pants printed with red hearts, tissues surrounding me in a near perfect circle, a family friend asked me a question I’ve never forgotten: “Do you love who you are when you’re with that person?”

The answer was no.

That question is with me years later. There’s a truth worthy of remembering: if you can’t be yourself with the people around you, it takes a toll. Over time, it chips away at a sense of self and can inhibit possibilities.

It’s not just in relationships of the heart either. In professional environments, many contort to fit the perceived bill to endeavor to belong with others. Contorting is exhausting.

Often the root of it is loving who you are when you’re with yourself. For many this is brave, lifelong developmental and for some, healing work. It’s gritty, gnarly, knotty at times. Getting to a place where one can genuinely say “I like myself the way I am” or “I am enough” is a very special place of arrival, and cliché as it may sound, it’s not a destination. It can still ebb and flow and require nurturing to stay alive and well.

I think it also helps to have trusted, psychologically safe fellow humans in our lives to help teach us what it looks and feels like to experience belonging just as we are (as Timothy R. Clark offers, “rewarded vulnerability”). Soon, it becomes clear with whom we come alive, and with whom we get small.

So… Who in your orbit helps you love who you are when you’re with them? Where do you experience a disconnect? How might this noticing inform your future moves?

And a drum roll question: How safe are you making it for others to be themselves with you?

Here’s to your fervor,

Eva