Opening the Door…Choosing Yourself
There is a moment in the Bluebeard story that changes everything.
The moment she chooses to open the door.
Not because she is reckless, or because she wants to betray. But because something in her needs to know what is true.
I think about this often.
Because, in many ways, we are taught to do the opposite.
To be good, agreeable, to trust what we are told.
To not question too much. To stay out of the 'forbidden rooms'.
And, over time, that can become a way of living:
we override what we sense, we stay where something feels off,
we tell ourselves it's fine.
We don't open the door.
But choosing yourself, actually showing up in your own life, often looks like that moment.
The quiet, internal decision to see.
To not turn away from what you feel.
To not abandon your knowing.
To not stay small in order to stay safe.
And from the outside, this can look like disobedience. You might:
question what you have always accepted,
name something others would rather avoid,
step out of roles that once defined you.
It can disrupt relationships.
It can change the direction of your life.
Which is why it is so often resisted.
But choosing yourself is not always comfortable.
It doesn't always keep the peace.
It doesn't always make sense to others.
But it is deeply honest.
And in that way, it can feel like a kind of spiritual disobedience.
Not rebellion for rebellion's sake, but a refusal to live disconnected from what is true.
A willingness to see...even when it changes things.
And yes, there is a cost.
But there is also a cost to not choosing yourself.
A slow drifting away from your own experience.
A quiet knowing that keeps getting overridden.
A life that looks intact from the outside, but doesn't fully feel like yours.
So the question becomes:
What kind of disobedience are you willing to live with?
The kind that distances you from yourself, or the kind that brings you back?
I'm still learning this. Learning that choosing myself isn't a one-time act...it's a series of moments.
Small, sometimes quiet....
Where I decide to stay in relationship to what I know. Even when it would be easier not to.
I wonder...is there a 'door' in your life right now that you've been hesitating to open?