This year, I received a lesson that I didn’t expect…

It didn’t come from a trusted loved one. It came through the quiet influence of a new friendship—one that challenged me in ways I didn’t know I needed.

For most of my life, I have been someone who gives. I have spent years pouring myself into my family, serving the people I love, making sure their needs were met before I ever considered my own. It wasn’t something I resented. In many ways, it felt like my purpose.

But somewhere along the way, I forgot something important.

I forgot how to sit with myself.

A new friend gently began encouraging me to learn that skill. At first, the idea felt strange—almost uncomfortable. Sitting with myself? Being still with my own thoughts, my own needs, my own heart?

It was unfamiliar territory.

He would say things that challenged the way I had always operated: You need to learn to be with yourself – to enjoy yourself and know and love yourself.
At first, I challenged this concept thinking that I do know how to exist with myself.

But over time, I’ve begun to understand something deeper. Sitting with myself gave me the freedom and quiet to study myself and reflect on my patterns, my desires and the things that I truly need to flourish.

Choosing myself isn’t the same as abandoning others.

It’s learning that my voice matters too.

This year, I have been learning the language of boundaries. I’m discovering what it means to say, “This is what I need.” I’m learning to be more assertive—something that does not come naturally to someone who has spent decades trying to make sure everyone else was comfortable.

To be honest, implementing boundaries sometimes feels a little unloving to me. There’s a voice inside that whispers, Shouldn’t you just give more? Shouldn’t you just make it work?

But I’m beginning to see that healthy boundaries are not acts of rejection. They are acts of stewardship.

They protect the heart God entrusted to me.

Learning to pursue what I need has felt like developing a muscle I’ve never used before. At times it feels awkward. At times it feels brave. And sometimes it still feels a little scary.

But it also feels empowering.

This friendship didn’t give me something I didn’t already have. Instead, it held up a mirror and helped me see what had been buried beneath years of self-sacrifice—the quiet truth that I am allowed to exist as a whole person too.

I am allowed to have needs.

I am allowed to rest.

I am allowed to choose me.

I can be alone.

And perhaps the most beautiful part of this journey is realizing that choosing myself doesn’t make me less loving. If anything, it makes my love more honest, more sustainable, and more rooted in truth.

I’m still learning. Still practicing. Still stretching into this new space.

But this year, for the first time in a long time, I feel something growing inside me that I hadn’t felt before.

Strength.

And I’m deeply grateful for the friend who helped me begin to find it.