Nobody warns you about this part.
They tell you to grow. Find yourself. Choose your own life. Be brave. And all of that is true and worth hearing. But what they don’t tell you is what happens to some of your relationships when you actually do it.
When you change, not everyone will be glad.
Not because they’re bad in any way. But because the version of you that was quiet and accommodating and reliably easy to manage – she worked for them. And this new version, the one with clearer limits and a stronger sense of her own value? She can be disorienting. Even threatening. To people who benefited from your smallness, your growth can look like a problem.
I’ve felt this. The surprise on someone’s face when I didn’t say, Sure, that’s fine… The comment that landed like: you’ve changed. Said not as a compliment.
I have changed. And I’m not going back.
In my Motherhood Studies training, the Fish Tank Model describes the invisible system that surrounds women – the social norms, family expectations, relationship patterns that define what’s acceptable. When you exist quietly within the system, everything feels fine. The moment you start to shift, the system pushes back. It needs you where you were.
It’s not personal. It feels personal – intensely, sometimes painfully personal. But it’s systemic. You are bumping up against a structure that was designed to keep women compliant and in their place.
The people who genuinely love you, and who are capable of growing themselves, will adjust. Some will need time. Some will surprise you. And some – this is the part that nobody tells you – may not be able to come with you.
That is one of the harder truths of real change. Not everyone will celebrate who you’re becoming. Some of them were comfortable in your previous version.
But here is what I know, from my own life and from other women I’ve spoken with:
You cannot grow and simultaneously stay small for everyone’s comfort. Those two things cannot coexist. And now that you’ve seen the tank – now that you know what you’ve been swimming in – you cannot unsee it.
The discomfort of growing is temporary. The cost of shrinking back is permanent.
Choose growth.
This week’s practice:
Think of someone in your life who may be uncomfortable with who you’re becoming.
Now think of the last thing you almost said to them – and didn’t. The sentence you edited.
Write the unedited version. The thing you actually wanted to say. You don’t have to send it, share it, or do anything with it. Just write it without softening it for once.
Notice how that feels. Not reckless. Not unkind. Just true.
That gap – between what you said and what you wrote just now — that’s the distance you’re closing. That’s what becoming looks like.
It takes practice. But you’re already doing it.
With love and best wishes always,
Susy