I defined myself too narrowly.

Yesterday evening, I gathered with three other amazing women.  The conversation flowed as if we had been long-time friends yet this was only our first gathering all together.  And time flew by so fast that the first time I checked the time was as we were getting ready to end the night, 3 hours and 40 minutes after I had arrived.

There was no place for judgment around that table.  We were just women lifting up other women, listening to each other's stories, and holding each other's hands.  I don't have adequate words for the feelings I felt in the moment.  I just knew that I had a place at that table and that it was exactly where I was meant to be.

And it was the kind of thought provoking conversations that follow me long after we have parted ways.  So this morning, the first thought in my head was about how I had boxed myself into a corner so often throughout my life.  It was insight that came out of the story of one of those women.

I don't know how often over the last months I have commented to someone that something I'm doing is so out of character or how I don't know what made me sign up for something.  There is this incongruence that I have felt between who I believe I am and who I'm proving I can be.

The divorce gave me the freedom, maybe even the encouragement to question how I have always defined myself.   I'm unravelling who I am because society pressures me to be that way, who I am because of expectations from my ex-husband, and who I am just for myself.  But my mind hasn't fully let go of that narrow view of myself and so doubt creeps in and I question how incongruent it feels at times.

So it's time to more fully let go of those limitations that I created when I decided who I was without leaving space for more.  It's time to embrace the both/and of life, the contradictory things that can be true at the same time along with all the gray space between.

And I really hope my connections with these amazing women continue to grow and that they continue to keep me thinking deeply about this world I live in.