Grounded and Skinny?

Today was a good day.

Today at softball someone told me I look skinny.

And Today at lunch someone also told me I seem very grounded lately.

While I don’t mind looking skinny (thinner, definitely not skinny) the latter comment meant so much more to me.

I finally feel like I’m reaching a place of calm.

I’ve been using the Life Wheel and the Feelings wheel by Dr. Gloria Wilcox. (For someone who likes tangible small things—I recommend you try it).

By working on just two new practices per week you can alter sometimes up to three of the spokes. And so on. And so on. My goal is to move each spoke up 3 points by December.

I’ve been writing daily. Getting outside daily. Shutting my phone off. Making new friends. Cultivating old friendships that I never had time for. Trying new things. Doing therapy weekly. Those things could not happen when I was in active fight or flight. I was just trying to survive then while trying to meet the demands of everyone else’s needs while not being able to focus on my own. I was forced into a corner of doing what everyone wanted of me and felt guilty when I couldn’t deliver. Now I understand the power of a boundary. The power of saying no. The power of taking space if someone cannot respect what I ask for. The power of not letting someone else’s deregulation make me feel like I’m too much, too little, or cause it. I am only responsible for my own feelings, not others.

Todays writing:

For a long time, I thought being grounded meant being calm.

Now I think it means knowing what belongs to me.

My feelings belong to me.
My choices belong to me.
My mistakes belong to me.
My apologies belong to me.

But someone else’s anger does not.

I spent a long time in a relationship where anger was handed to me like an invoice.

I’m not an angry person. You make me angry. She would say.

Look at what you made me do.

There is something powerful about that sentence when you hear it enough from someone who is supposed to be a protector and partner in communicating. It quietly teaches you that another person’s emotions are your responsibility. That if they yell, you should examine what you did. If they lose control, you should ask how you could have prevented it. If they are hurt, furious, jealous, or afraid, you should immediately begin searching yourself for the crime.

So you become hyperaware.

You explain yourself before anyone asks.

You apologize before you even know what you’re apologizing for.

You start measuring your decisions by the emotional weather they might create in someone else.

And eventually, guilt starts masquerading as accountability.

I am learning there is a difference.

Accountability says:
I hurt you. I need to own that.

Guilt says:
You are hurting, therefore I must have done something wrong.

Those are not the same sentence.

Being grounded has meant learning to stand still long enough to tell the difference.

It means I can listen when someone tells me I hurt them without immediately deciding I am a terrible person.

It means I can apologize when an apology is mine to give.

It also means I can refuse to apologize simply because someone is angry that I made a choice they didn’t like.

That has been one of the strangest markers of growth for me:

I don’t feel guilty about everything anymore.

At first, that almost felt like becoming colder.

It isn’t.

I think I’m becoming more honest.

Because when you stop taking responsibility for everyone else’s emotions, you finally have enough room to take real responsibility for your own.

I can ask myself harder questions now.

Was I kind?

Was I truthful?

Did I act according to my values?

Did I cause harm?

Is there something I need to repair?

And if the answer is yes, I want to own it.

But if the only thing I did was disappoint someone, choose myself, establish a boundary, walk away, or refuse to carry something that wasn’t mine—

I am learning not to manufacture guilt just because guilt feels familiar.

Maybe that’s what grounded means to me now.

Not becoming impossible to shake.

Not becoming emotionless.

Not always knowing whether I made the perfect decision.

Just putting both feet underneath me and knowing:

This is mine.

That is yours.

And loving someone does not require me to confuse the two.