There are things we carry because they belong to us.
And there are things we carry simply because no one ever taught us how to put them down.
Expectations.
Old stories.
Family patterns.
Other people’s fears.
The version of ourselves we learned to become in order to be loved, accepted, safe, or needed.
Sometimes we carry grief that isn’t ours.
Sometimes we carry responsibility for other people’s happiness.
Sometimes we carry an identity we outgrew years ago because we aren’t sure who we would be without it.
And sometimes we don’t even realize we’re carrying anything at all.
We simply know we’re tired.
I have spent a lot of my life witnessing people at the edges of things.
Birth.
Death.
Grief.
Beginnings.
Endings.
The moments when life asks us to become someone new.
Those experiences have taught me something I return to again and again.
Life has a way of revealing what we are carrying.
A birth changes a family.
A death changes a family.
A child growing up changes a mother.
A marriage changes two people.
A loss changes what we believe about ourselves and the world.
And sometimes the greatest transformation isn’t becoming something new.
It’s realizing what no longer needs to come with us.
What if healing isn’t always about fixing?
What if sometimes healing is about releasing?
Releasing the belief that you have to hold everything together.
Releasing the expectation that your life should look a certain way by a certain age.
Releasing the need to make everyone understand your choices.
Releasing an old definition of success.
Releasing guilt that has outlived its purpose.
Releasing the belief that because something has always been done a certain way, it must continue to be done that way.
This doesn’t mean abandoning responsibility.
Quite the opposite.
It means becoming more conscious about what is actually ours to carry.
Because we cannot carry everything.
And we shouldn’t.
This is one of the questions I think we should ask ourselves more often:
What am I carrying—and why?
Is it mine?
Is it still mine?
Did I choose it?
Does it serve who I am becoming?
Or did I simply inherit it?
These questions don’t necessarily give us immediate answers.
But questions have a remarkable way of opening doors.
And sometimes realization is the beginning of liberation.
Perhaps becoming more intentional with our lives isn’t about adding more.
Perhaps it is also about deciding what we are willing to leave behind.
Not everything we carry needs to be carried forward.
Some things are meant to end with us.
And maybe that’s part of what legacy really is—not simply what we leave behind, but what we consciously choose not to pass on.
So, today, I’m asking myself.
What am I carrying that was never mine to carry?
And perhaps that’s a question worth asking yourself, too.
Nurturing Spirit 