Did I Choose This?

Some of the strongest forces shaping our lives are the ones we don’t know are there.

No one necessarily sat us down and explained them.

There was no family handbook. As children, we learned by watching the adults around us: how they worked, what they called success, what happened when someone failed.

We saw how they loved and handled anger, disappointment, and grief. We noticed who was allowed to need help, what was admired, and what was never talked about at all.

Long before we could examine any of it, we were drawing conclusions.

This is how grief is handled.

This is what marriage looks like.

This is what people like us do, or don’t do.

Over time, those conclusions can become unwritten rules.

Because we don’t recognize them as something we learned, they simply feel true.

Some serve us well.

We may have learned loyalty, persistence, kindness, humor, or courage.

Others quietly limit what feels possible.

We stay in a role we no longer want.

We feel guilty when we rest or apologize for needing help.

We keep being strong when what we really want is to be cared for.

No one is telling us we can’t do otherwise. It isn’t forbidden or impossible.

It just feels like not something I do.

That feeling can be hard to question because it seems to come from who we are. But some of it may also come from what we inherited.

Our parents and grandparents learned from their families, too, shaped by their own losses, opportunities, fears, and times.

Ways of responding to life can travel from one generation to the next without anyone intending to pass them on.

Then we hear ourselves say something and recognize another voice.

We make a choice and wonder why doing otherwise would feel disloyal.

We see someone handle grief, conflict, or change differently, and realize there is more than one way.

It can be a strange moment. What has always felt like just the way I am begins to look more like a way I learned to be. Not necessarily a bad way.

Perhaps it helped me belong. Perhaps it helped me feel safe. But did I ever choose it?

Familiarity can feel a lot like truth. We may keep playing a part because we know its lines, even when it no longer fits the life we want.

Seeing that doesn’t mean blaming the people who came before us or rejecting everything they gave us.

It means we can pause long enough to ask what still belongs to us and what we’ve simply grown used to.

Perhaps part of becoming ourselves is learning to tell the difference—and giving ourselves permission to decide.

Is this still how I want to live?