If you have ever wondered if choosing to stay will result in losing yourself, this space is for you.

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I have left relationships, careers, communities and family. Often, I considered myself the broken one. In an effort to fix myself, I tumbled into a deep fascination on the topic of why and how we leave. I explored what leads up to leaving and what happens after.

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I have spent over five years observing the choice to stay or go and cultural norms surrounding it. Part of my process included interviewing 50 women of different ages, ethnicities and experiences on the topic of what they left and what they discovered. Gifts of earned wisdom, wrapped in cultural narratives of choice,  inspire my writing.

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Common threads in our leaving experiences 

• The fear of choosing wrong

• The worry of whether our decision will make sense to others

• How our knowing shows up in our body

• The struggle to navigate the space between our circumstances and our calling

• Anticipation for how our choice might impact others

• The pull of duty versus desire

• Trusting the possibility of something more, even when we don't know what that looks like

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What I wish I had known earlier 

Leaving is a choice not a symptom of being broken 

 

Sometimes we have to leave what we once loved 

to make space for what we really desire

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Monica L Dillon

@chaptersonleaving