Retreat

I had to retreat.
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Retreat-noun. an act of moving back or withdrawing.
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The last 16 months I have chosen to retreat. 16 months ago I realized I had no idea who Melissa was. That action made most people around me uncomfortable. I was asked:
“Why can’t you be happy with what you have?”
“Do you think this is a mid-life crisis?”
“Is this just grief?”
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I don’t know.
Maybe.
Possibly.
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But how do I know? To discover the answers I was forced to be reintroduced to myself. Or maybe it was to meet me for the first time. In order to meet myself I chose to retreat. Make my circle small. Tune out the noise and listen only to the voice of my heart and my mind and my soul. While everyone had an opinion on what I was doing, for the first time in my life I listened to my inner knowing.
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It felt selfish. It hurt people. It was devastating. Crumbled the life I knew.
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It’s been hard. The hardest thing I’ve done. A process of uncovering who I am versus who I have been. Who I want to be versus who I have shown up as.
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There were endless sleepless nights. Days when it felt easier to check out instead of staying in the work. Buckets of tears. A constant feeling I had been punched in the gut. But slowly the tears have become less. The smile has started to return. There is a clearing.
Clarity (my 2025 word of the year)
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It’s been gueling. Hard work both behind the walls of my therapists office and in times of solitude…but slowly the old me and the new me are learning to coexist and I’m being reintroduced to who Mel really is.
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