You Can Want Things You Gave Up

Once upon a dream...

Isn't that a cruel phrase? It suggests that dreams belong to fairy tales--something imagined, distant, or inaccessible in real life. 

How many of us have given up on a dream? I know I have. I wanted to be a paleontologist, then a marine biologist, then a professional singer, and then a model.

I gave up on every single one of those dreams, but one refused to stay gone. 

There are many reasons why a dream gets left it in the past: you didn't have the time, you didn't have the money, you didn't have the right connections, or in my case, you didn't want to disappoint anyone. I chose the path that I thought would make other people the happiest.

I believe that what's meant for you will always find you. Even if you think you gave up on that silly little dream from years ago, if it's truly part of your destiny, it will knock on the inside of your soul again and again until you're ready to take action with it. 

For many of us, women and mothers especially, there's an unspoken belief that after a certain point our dreaming days are over. When life pulls us in all different directions, giving up on dreams to focus on responsibility seems admirable, thought it feels like a hollow act of self-abandonment. 

Those dreams aren't necessarily dead though. The ones you were never meant to let go of go into hibernation, waiting for the right season to return.

Does picking up an old dream mean you're regressing on your path in life? 

We live in a deeply linear society, one that recognizes forward motion as legitimate progress. Reinvention doesn't usually include returning to something from your past--retuning to old dreams. 

If you're a busy adult, caught up in the real world of bills, stress, health issues, and car problems, the practical answer would probably be "no". After all, it seems irresponsible to add a nagging, impractical, long-lost dream on top of everything else you've already got going on. 

But maybe you sense that there's something deeper behind the urge to chase that dream, even if it doesn't make sense yet. Do you ever feel that call, only to push it down because you don't feel safe asking for more your life?

We're often told that many of life's smaller dissatisfactions can be cured with a healthy dose of gratitude. Gratitude is a beautiful, grounding practice. However, there have been times in my life where gratitude became harmful. It became a tool to instill shame and guilt--saying "You should be happy with what you have, why do you want something else? Sounds like you're being ungrateful." 

Gratitude isn't healthy when it silences you.

It is okay to want more. 

When I first gave myself permission to want more, I noticed resistance from certain people around me. According to them, I already had everything: a husband, children, and a house of my own. That resistance made me feel uncomfortable and unworthy. I struggled with the realization that some people in my life didn't want to see me grow, change, or dream--projecting onto me their own limited mindsets.

I thought maybe there was just something wrong with me. Why couldn't I be content? I tried to train myself to agree to the idea that women are perfectly complete once they have a family. That motherhood and ambition are not compatible. While parenthood is a beautiful and meaningful part of lives and part of the purpose of our biological lives, we are more than just our biology. We are spiritual beings; we have a soul purpose as well. 

Your life is more than just work and bills and babies. Your life is also for your dreams.

Yearning for more did not mean that I was ungrateful for the life I had. It meant my soul was trying to reconnect with me, to point me towards my own path in life. I spent years as an anxious people-pleaser, completely shutting off my ability to listen to my own heart and mind. Choosing to chase my dreams again was not selfish, it was the greatest act of self-love.

Life will pull you away from your dreams. That's part of being human. You're not supposed to know exactly what you're meant to do right away. Part of living is learning how to tune out the noise of the world and reconnect with your inner voice--your spirituality. It's not easy to do, but deciding to follow your dreams, old or new, is a perfect way to nurture the connection between yourself and your soul.

We are all born with a purpose to our existence. Our dreams are part of that purpose. It's easy to give up on our dreams for the sake of reality. Don't be afraid to want more in life and start dreaming again.

Maybe you feel drawn towards a long-lost dream, maybe you feel inspired to follow a completely new one. Either way, you can want things you gave up. Whether it's a specific dream you gave up, or it's just the concept of dreaming you gave up. 

I am writing this blog just days before I get on a plane to spend the next three months in Milan, Italy on a modeling contract. 

None of this would be happening if I hadn't decided to pick up my modeling dream again--which I did after I had my first baby. 

I hope through dreaming out loud and openly chasing my dreams I can inspire you to chase yours. 

It's not selfish, it's not irresponsible. It's alignment.