leaving the safer-seeming path

on burnout, belief, and becoming

last week, I packed my life into boxes now sitting in storage, told the nonprofit job I once loved that I was leaving, and booked a one-way ticket to Europe to recover from burnout and chase creative pursuits.

this choice is scary for many reasons. not only did I give up financial stability and good benefits at a job I don’t necessarily loathe, I also don’t have another one lined up. aside from the economic realities, I had to say some of my hardest goodbyes to both my home and my friends.

three and a half years in a city seems minuscule in the grander sense, but leaving a community I built brick by brick had me second-guessing this transition every step of the way. the quiet ache of having outgrown my life became unavoidable. as it turns out, it’s okay to be grateful and content with your life, but still want more.

like clouds moving across the horizon, ocean waves begin their journey miles before crashing onto the shore. changes like temperature, wind speed, and the pull of the moon affect everything from its point of origin to its point of arrival. this is what I’ve been thinking about when the sudden desire for change presented itself out of nowhere.

(disclaimer: economic stability is necessary and valid for many. I don’t mean to romanticize decisions that may not be feasible for everyone. I am deeply grateful to be in a position that allows me to pursue unconventional next steps, and this essay is a reflection of not holding myself back)

moral injury

sometimes you feel so certain that you’ve found the thing you want to do forever or at least the foreseeable future, until well, you don’t feel that way anymore. the unraveling happens over time, over a series of instances that start to feel too heavy to ignore.

many of you know that I’ve been working in the reproductive justice movement for the past few years with a focus on intersectionality. at a team-wide meeting after october 7th, 2023, I brought up the importance of sharing resources about Palestine because there is no reproductive justice without Palestinian liberation. with explicit leadership approval, I poured over resources, dedicating hours outside my 9-5, and shared them widely.

the next morning, I get an email outlining my demotion and the terms of a PIP. the reason given was vague, but the message was clear: the organization had lost zionist funding, and someone needed to take the fall. I was forced to publish a statement—written by the executive director—apologizing for bringing my “personal opinions” into the work. I signed my name to it under threat of termination.

the following days were ripe with tension, aggressive emails, and their total refusal to communicate outside an inbox. shattered but steadfast in my convictions, I immediately began to job search and landed somewhere where i’ve been able to help texans access abortion care. I told myself the past was an anomaly, not a warning. for a while, I re-gained my passion in what I thought was my forever home until the exhaustion of being undervalued caught up to me.

in a recent interview with a national reproductive right org, I inquired about their stance on Palestine to which they said “we don’t have one,” adding, “you’ll find that most national orgs don’t.” not only is that very very false, but two and a half years into a genocide, I had wondered how an organization can even pretend to be in service of reproductive justice. still, I was invited back to interview.

I declined.

in my response, I explained that reproductive justice cannot exist without collective liberation, and that silence, too, is a position. walking away felt like grief and relief all at once.

that was when I finally stopped abandoning parts of myself to belong to institutions that didn’t practice what they preached. this reckoning broke my heart because I do and always will care deeply about bodiy autonomy, but I questioned if my contributions might make more of an impact elsewhere. I wasn’t mourning these jobs so much as I was mourning the horrors of the world and what these institutions were willing to defend.

on riding the wave of uncertainty

I spent the morning making pomegranate juice and thinking about this quote on finding wisdom through surrender:

Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?

Rumi

between leaving my job and having unanswered questions about what’s next, I realized how much I yearned to escape. completely. fully. away from everyone and everything to return to myself, parts lost over the last few years. there’s a specific type of loneliness that exists between the space of lukewarm contentment and curiosity. it isn’t quite depression, and it’s not loneliness either, but a feeling that hums in the background of your day-to-day, begging you to explore what more could look like.

routines that once brought you comfort start to feel mundane. a job you once idealized starts to make your chest feel tight. conversations feel forced. driving on the highway feels like a simulation. on the outside, your life is full, but on the inside, you start to feel trapped. small even. one day, you stop to ask yourself why you’re holding yourself back. is it fear?

we often move through life in waves of explainable lifestyles, ones that are easy for other people to digest. we tend to tuck away our wildest dreams for the sake of foreseeable stability, and that’s understandable! somewhere along the way, I had to get real with myself and contend with the regret I’d likely feel in the pursuit of comfort. my current identity engulfed me.

I took pleasure in memorizing the routes to my favorite coffee shops and going to jazz night every monday that it became almost impossible to imagine anything else. my sense of childlike wonder and creative horizons were shrinking every day that I assumed this feeling was temporary. believe me, part of me wishes it was.

we’ll never taste how sweet life can be if we stay on the safer-seeming path. quitting your job, saying goodbye to friends, and moving. these are all big changes that will undoubtedly come with moments of hardship, and that’s okay. for the first time in my life, I am okay with riding the wave of uncertainty.

detachment as a form of trust

as we get older, we become acutely aware that the only constant in life is change. how we choose to embrace that is entirely up to us and what we value most.

lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of detachment and the low-grade grief that comes with being in your late twenties and early thirties. we’re in that sweet spot where everybody’s life starts to look really different. some are planning weddings or having children, while others are buying homes. then you have friends who are moving cities or even countries left and right, and others going back to school. all of these options leave you wondering which path makes the most sense, and honestly? the answer could be none of them.

up until now, we’ve played by the rules society has deemed appropriate, many of which sit neatly under the confines of capitalism. go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, and find fulfillment in boxes that may not fit us all. what happens when you look back at life years down the line and realize you stopped chasing your dreams? we often forget that exercising free will can look and feel catalysmic, against the grain, and can even mean sitting in the discomfort of being lost.

practicing detaching is a lot like trusting that the universe will bring you to where you need to be. many good things can grow from loosening your grip. you begin to want things you don’t even know how to name yet.

leaving one garden to plant another

taking this risk will come with unprecedented growth, and even in the worst-case scenario, I can simply return home. the weight of the world is incredibly heavy. it seems like it always has been, and I know we’re all struggling to remain in the light of hope. despite feeling lost and knowing many others around me are quietly dreaming of leaving (the increasingly fascist USA), the ability and privilege to figure out where I may land next is exciting.

from what I’ve observed, so many of us don’t fully lean into possibility over conformity. instead, we train ourselves to find lukewarm contentment with a lifestyle that we’re used to. i’m grateful to exist in a time when so many young women are unwilling to let life slip by. we are becoming. we’re sitting in the messiness, the uncertainty, with a simple but bold wish to chase whispers of dreams unlived.

some chapters are meant to loosen your grip and help you step into the person you’re meant to become. I was deeply in love with my life in Houston. my time consisted of grounding rituals: yoga flows with instructors turned friends, substack friday with my bestie, impromptu walks in the neighborhood I knew so many, and organizing. my garden was being watered because of the community I was fortunate enough to have found.

the hard part: continuing to tend to one garden or leaving open the possibility of drifting to another and planting new flowers. the real question is how willing we are to step into fields beyond our wildest imaginations.

if this resonated or has you wondering if it’s time to plant new seeds, here are some questions to guide you:

• are there things you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t found the right moment for?

• if you were talking to an older version of yourself right now, would they wonder why you stayed? or didn’t follow your heart?

• if you only had one year left to live, how would you spend it?

• what is scarier to you - the idea of failing or not having tried?

• what other ways can you build community, stand against injustice, and work towards new systems?