Negotiating With My Own Knowing:
I feel like her again, confident and ready to take on the permission granted to me. For weeks, I felt lost, but now signs have been coming through so loudly, validating the very thing my heart yearned for. Now I can move, now I can be the girl I feel deep inside, thats been trying to make an appearance.
But the not-so-funny thing is that feeling never lasts long. Those precious synchronicities that confirm my alignment never seem to be enough to keep me fully believing them. I notice doubt creeps in, and I am asking myself, “Are we sure? Is this really for me?” This puts me in a cycle that spins me around so fast I can’t grasp how I got back to the other side of my conviction. How the certainty I felt only days before suddenly disappears, leaving my confidence defeated.
Why does thick fog form in my mind, leaving me searching for a hand, or some sort of proof that I can make it to the other side? Somewhere, safety became that embrace that held the bigness of who I knew I could be. The magnitude of its responsibility makes me doubt I can carry it alone, or that I'm not good enough to have it.
When did confirmation become such a vital statement in my life that it steers my decisions? There are times when it actually worked out for certain purposes, but if I am honest, the areas in my life that require more from me never have that firm authority behind them. It always feels like I'm waiting to be let in. Waiting to be wanted. Waiting to be valued. If i walk in before being asked, there is a risk of rejection. How much longer will the trauma in my subconscious mind delay my knowing?
Negotiating my allegiance to myself weakens my loyalty to my intuition. Validation makes my choices feel safer and easier to grasp. But the cost is quiet. My soul is left fluttering, saddened that its own affirmation is never enough. She’s constantly seeing me, affirming what already exists. Yet I wait for confirmation that it sees me, so I can move, while bargaining with my own sovereignty, which always shows up—treating her like a suggestion when she has always been the law.
To be fair, I was unaware that the word I was using with such confidence had a subtly different meaning from what I intended. It wasn’t until my therapist brought it to my attention that I felt the shift happen within me when she replaced confirmation with affirmation. I paused when she said it. I felt it dig deeper into my core when she let me know why it was an affirmation, not a confirmation. Immediately, confirmation felt external, as if I were waiting for something to be given to me or permission to act in a way I was naturally born to be. Affirmation hit different. It had this ownership behind it when she said. It made me feel like I was trusting my superpower to be in someone else's hands instead of my own.
This is one of the reasons I love therapy. Language! If you have a good therapist, they can articulate your feelings for you without even realizing it. For me, that is a huge help, because it’s one of the reasons I write. I am always trying to make sense of what is going on within me.
Confirmation implies that authority sits outside of you, waiting to validate your place. Affirmation asks something different. With affirmation, you stop asking the world if you are allowed and begin recognizing the truth when it reflects back to you.
What would happen if I simply believed what I knew was true, and when it was mirrored back to me, I didn’t question its affirming gesture? Where could I be now if I had simply stood on business? If my actions had backed up the conviction already living in my soul.
One thing I know, the satisfying feeling I get from confirmation arrives quickly. But it slips away just as fast. It never sticks. I now understand affirmation to be different. Affirming my truth will always have staying power. The word itself hits you in the chest, making you stand taller and prouder. Confidence stays because it can’t be denied. Choices feel purposeful and actionable. The negotiation is no longer happening at the table. I am learning that trusting her knowing is always enough. Believing that my calling and my desires are an intrinsic part of me. They were built into who I am, not given to me. So I no longer have to be scared of shrinking them when they show up and affirm themselves.
She and I are now dancing in sync. Our steps move with authority, long before proof appears.
I spent years asking to be seen. Maybe those affirming magical moments were answering me all along. Something is listening