Welcome back to Unfiltered with Love. I'm your host, Carrie Love, and I'm so glad you're here. Let's get into today's conversation. The other night I was watching a movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, and there was a line that immediately caught my attention. It was when Sipsi says, Miss Ruth was a lady, and a lady always knows when to leave. The second I heard that, I thought of my grandmother. She was a lady too. Not just because she dressed impeccably and had perfect manners. She just carried herself with this quiet confidence. She knew who she was. And so funny because I was looking in one of her old yearbooks, and it said that she was in a play or something in school, and her character in the play was the valiant lady. And I thought that that was so appropriate for her because everybody that knew her would say that she was such a lady and she had such class and carried herself with such grace. Hearing that quote in the movie really made me think of her. But what's funny is the quote wasn't really what stayed with me. It was what my mind did with it afterwards. Later that night, I was lying in my bed and I kept thinking, maybe the bigger question isn't when do we leave? Maybe it's why do we spend so much time trying to make ourselves fit before we ever stop and ask if we're actually in the right place? Because if you think about it, when something doesn't feel right, our first instinct usually isn't to look at the situation, it's to look at ourselves. We ask, what do I need to do differently? Maybe I need to communicate better, maybe I need to be more patient, maybe I'm expecting too much. Those aren't bad questions, they're actually really healthy questions, but I wonder why they're almost always the first ones we ask. You know, and I find myself sometimes thinking, do I need to explain this better? Maybe I'm not clarifying it, or, you know, I never want to be misunderstood or have what I'm saying to be thought of as saying something else. I always want to make sure that everybody knows exactly where I'm coming from. Now I want to be careful here because I don't want this conversation to sound like I'm encouraging people to walk away every time life gets uncomfortable. I don't believe that. I don't want to become someone who walks away every time life gets uncomfortable. And I thought about that and the leaving and that quote about knowing when to leave. And I've done so much healing, and I think when you get to the point where you've done so much healing and you learn to set boundaries, I found myself asking, Is now the time I'm supposed to leave? When should I leave? Am I staying too long? Is this a sign to leave? Because I think you spend so much time, or at least I have spent so much time in relationships that I felt like I've stayed too long. So now, because I've healed and have the boundaries, I'm asking myself, am I staying too long? Should I be leaving? Then I realized that I've still been looking at every situation through the eyes of someone in survival mode. For a while, healing looked like learning when to leave. Because I'm not in survival mode anymore. And I think that's why this question has stayed with me. Because now I don't think the better question is when should I leave? I think the better question is, am I becoming more of myself here or less? Because those are two very different questions. If I'm becoming more patient, more compassionate, more emotionally mature, that's growth. But if I'm becoming quieter because I'm afraid, making myself smaller, editing who I am, that's something else entirely. I also keep thinking about the difference between fitting in and belonging. I don't think they're the same thing. When you're trying to fit in, you're constantly aware of yourself. Did I say the right thing? Am I too much? Am I not enough? Should I have stayed quiet? It's exhausting because you're constantly managing yourself. Belonging feels different. Belonging feels like exhaling. You don't have to perform, you don't have to earn your place. You can simply be. It made me think about my relationship with my best friend. We've been friends for a long time now, since I was a year old and she was three years old. And we've gone through lots of different phases in that relationship. There were times when I was married and she was single, and you know, I had kids, she didn't have kids, and then she got married later, and then I was single. And so through all of that time together, what I realized through everything that she has been the one person, the one person in my life who I could always be myself. And sure, we've had arguments, we've disagreed politically at times, but we're still best friends. Then I had another thought. Maybe that's why some people seem to completely come alive after changing jobs or finding new friends or moving somewhere new. People always say, you've changed. Maybe they haven't. Maybe they're finally somewhere they don't have to spend all their energy trying to fit. Maybe they've found somewhere they belong. I even started thinking about nature. Did you ever look at a sunflower and think, you know, that sunflower should really try harder to be a rose? It sounds ridiculous because nature doesn't work that way. Everything grows best where it belongs. So why do we spend so much of our lives believing that if we don't fit somewhere, the answer is to change ourselves? Maybe before we spend all our energy adapting, we should ask, can I actually be myself here? Can I actually say the things that I want to say with honesty? Can I be silly? Can I have a bad day? Will that person still accept me the way I am? Will I still belong? What if we've been asking the wrong questions? I don't have an answer. Honestly, I'm still thinking about it, but I do know this. I don't want to become someone who gives up too easily, and I don't want to become someone who slowly disappears because I'm trying so hard to make something work. I think wisdom is learning the difference, the difference between growth and self-abandonment, the difference between perseverance and losing yourself. Maybe that's what that quote from Fried Green Tomatoes was really pointing me toward. Not simply knowing when to leave, but knowing yourself well enough to recognize the places where you can truly stay as yourself. Thanks for hanging out with me today. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a message, leave a review, or share this episode with someone who might need it. And before I go, here's the question I've been asking myself this week. Where in your life are you growing? And where might you be changing yourself just to fit? Until next time, keep asking good questions, keep being curious, and most importantly, keep showing up as yourself. This is Unfiltered with Love. I'm your host, Carrie Love. I'll see you next week.