Dear Reader,
Have you ever known what felt right for you โ and then started doubting yourself the moment someone else questioned it?
Maybe you replay conversations afterward.
Over-explain your choices.
Worry that you've disappointed someone.
Or find yourself looking for reassurance before you can fully trust what you already know.
For empaths especially, caring deeply about other people can sometimes make it difficult to tell where consideration for others ends and abandoning ourselves begins.
This week on True to Yourself, we arrive at the Astral Chakra, the final energy center in our nine-chakra Divine Feminine Hero's Journey, with an invitation I find especially powerful:
to become self-luminous.
The moon is beautiful. But its light is reflected.
The sun shines from its own source.
Other people can reflect something beautiful back to us, too. They can teach us, encourage us, challenge us, love us, and sometimes see something in us before we can see it ourselves.
But their light was never meant to replace our own.
This is something I've had to learn deeply in my own spiritual journey. I've received profound gifts from teachers โ and I've also had to learn that honoring what someone taught me doesn't require surrendering my own discernment.
So this week, I want to invite you to gently ask yourself:
Whose approval are you still waiting for?
And perhaps even more importantly:
Does their influence help you trust yourself more โ or less?
โ