Choose Who You Surround Yourself With

The people you surround yourself with have such a profound impact on the quality of your life & how you see yourself. 

And it took me 37 years to understand how much that is true.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to find where I fit in. 

Acceptance has never been a concept I was able to be familiar with growing up. 

That has left me in a confused fog of “who actually IS Hannah”? 

It’s a difficult thing to see and know yourself in all your authenticity when the environment around you is demanding you be a certain way.

It’s terrifying to allow yourself to simply be when the world around you is ready to throw you away when you deviate from their expectations (demands) of you.

If I’m being honest - it has left me with an enormous amount of anger sitting in my belly and a constant flow of firing off survival messages to my nervous system. 

But. And I give my Grandfather full credit for this (the fine Irishman that he was). There has always been a strong, quiet pull inside of me that kept me fighting for my space in this world.

I spoke out about injustices at the risk of losing every friend I had around me. 

I moved away from an environment that only wanted to see me conform or drown. 

I put myself & my child’s sense of self worth above everything else & wrote off people who were meant to hold larger places in our lives.

And I stayed doing thought work, reworking how trauma sits and responds in my body, and prioritizing mental health through therapy, books, and meditation.

Which brings me here. Today.

I look around and reflect on how much I have grown INTO myself.

I feel the self love that grows its way into being my default.

And I feel something I have never known before but that is now becoming the most familiar sense of peace in my life.

That peace is the people I have allowed to come into my bubble.

It’s special because I look at the women I call friends & realize the truth is - the women I spend time with right now at this phase in my life have healed me and called me home.

Each of them decided to see me - underneath all of the pain and mess I was dealing with. They didn’t demand perfection. In fact they tore that damn box to shreds and sat down with me to make sure I knew I was being seen.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have thought “Wow. They really just wanna hold space with me. Simply because they enjoy my company!”

A FOREIGN concept to me. 

And I realized. Life really does elevate (or not) based on the tribe of folks you choose to be your community.

Your chosen family.

That’s why they say you’re the sum of the people you spend the most time with.

I’m good with that - all I see is beauty, impact, love, and pure unconditional badassery. 

All that to say - if you aren’t seeing things manifest or present themselves in your life the way you would hope… Start by looking at who you surround yourself with. 

Are they doing things you want to be doing?

Do they have goals that have synergy with yours?

Are they able to call you out & guide you to be your best self?

Do they want the best for you? And how is “the best” defined? 

Life is not meant to be traveled alone. 

So make sure you choose the right people.