Why Don't You Take Up Your Space?

I want to ask you something and I want you to sit with it for a second before you answer.

Why don't you take up your space?

I don't know if this is just me. I don't know if it is a woman thing or if men do it too. But I think about how often we quietly adjust ourselves to make room for someone else. How often we shift, shrink, step back, give way, and call it being polite. Call it being easy. Call it not making a big deal out of things.

Today I want to make a big deal out of it. Because I think it is a bigger deal than we admit.

What the Gym Taught Me This Morning

I like going to the gym early. Like really early, before the crowd shows up. And I have known for a while that the reason I love it is because I get to take up my full space. I spread out. I use more than one machine. When I stretch I let my body actually go where it needs to go without apologizing for my elbows or my legs or how much floor I am taking up.

There is something that happens in me when I do that. Something settles. Something that feels a lot like permission.

This morning I was in aqua fit. I got there early and found my spot in the 4.6 foot water because I wanted to be covered, I wanted to feel held by the water while I moved. I was there. I was set. And then people started filling in around me.

The man beside me kept inching closer. Not all at once. Just a little at a time. The way these things happen. Slowly enough that you start to wonder if you're imagining it. Slowly enough that the old version of me would have already moved.

But I didn't move.

I stayed right where I was. And eventually he adjusted.

The Old Version Would Have Moved

That is the part I keep thinking about. Because on any other day, I probably would have stepped aside. Not because I wanted to. Not because I needed to. But because that is what I have been trained to do. Make it easy. Keep the peace. Don't take up too much.

And here is the thing about shrinking. It feels like kindness when you do it. It feels like being low maintenance and accommodating and good. But there is a cost that runs underneath all of that quiet accommodation, and the cost is you. Your comfort. Your ground. Your right to simply be where you already are.

Today something was different. I was in my spot. The water was exactly where I needed it. And I thought, no. This is where I am staying.

It sounds so small. Standing your ground in a pool. But ask yourself how many small moments like that you have collected over your lifetime. All the times you moved. All the times you made yourself smaller to make someone else more comfortable. All the times you told yourself it was fine when something inside you knew it was not.

Those moments add up. They become a pattern. And the pattern becomes a belief. And the belief sounds something like: my presence is an inconvenience.

That belief is a lie.

Your Existing Is a Blessing

I want you to hear this clearly because I mean it all the way down: your existing is a blessing. Not your productivity. Not your usefulness to other people. Not your ability to make everyone around you comfortable. Your actual presence on this earth is a gift.

The mind will not always agree with that. The mind is a story machine. It runs narratives constantly, most of them old, most of them borrowed from someone else's fear or someone else's wound. The mind will tell you that you are too much or not enough. That you should wait your turn, take up less room, be more manageable.

But you get to decide which stories you run with.

That is the piece that took me a long time to really land on. The mind generates stories the way the body generates breath. It is just what it does. The question is never whether the stories show up. The question is whether you believe them. Whether you build your life around them. Whether you let them quietly push you out of your own spot in the pool.

Where Are You Shrinking?

This is the question I am sitting with this month and I want to offer it to you.

Where in your life do you shrink? Where do you give ground you didn't actually want to give? Where do you move before anyone even asks you to?

And on the other side of that, where do you stand your ground? Where do you stay? What does it feel like in your body when you hold your space versus when you give it away?

I am not asking you to become someone who steamrolls people or takes more than their share. That is not what this is. This is about knowing what is yours and not quietly handing it over because someone else seems to want it more.

There is a difference between choosing to give and defaulting to giving because you don't trust that your presence is welcome.

One is generous. The other is a wound wearing the costume of generosity.

The Practice This Month

Notice it. That's all. Just start there.

When you feel yourself about to shift, about to step back, about to make yourself smaller, pause for just a breath. You don't have to stay. You don't have to fight for every inch. Just notice the impulse and ask yourself: is this what I actually want, or is this just what I do?

Some days the answer will be that you genuinely want to give way and that is beautiful. That is real generosity. But some days you will notice that you were about to abandon your spot in the pool for no reason other than habit. And on those days, stay.

Stay in your spot. Take up your space. Let your arms go all the way out.

You are not too much. You never were.

With love and full presence,

Kara

Joyful Healer