There are a thousand reasons to give up, to turn back or to not even try.

Maybe you’ll fail.

Maybe it will hurt.

Maybe you don’t have all the answers.

We all face this reality every day, don’t we? We are all given the opportunity to make a change or to continue as we have been. To take the next step forward or to stay sitting still. To fight for what we want or revert back to old behaviors.

It’s the human condition. To choose between desire and fear, risk and survival, progress and status quo. Every one of us is asked to make this choice daily.

But the sad thing is, many people don’t ever realize that. They just sleepwalk through life. They do the things they’ve always done, expect the life they’ve always lived, and cling to the beliefs that consistently hold them back, even though they’ve never taken the time to really look at them and decide if they are hurting or helping.

I am well familiar with this way of life. Because for years, I was a sleepwalker.

Healing from grief. Healing from pain. Healing from guilt. Healing from trauma.

I recently came across a picture of me shortly after my youngest was born. I was sitting on the floor in my townhouse, my infant laying in my arms and I am blankly staring at the television. There was nothing there. No emotion whatsoever. After feeling so much for months, I wanted to feel nothing. To feel nothing would have been such a blessing. My heart and soul needed a break. So I took it.

I did what I needed to do. I took care of my children. I did my job. I paid my bills.

But I would not call that time in my life really living. I had a finite amount of energy each day that I could devote to experiencing emotion and I reserved it for my children. To get excited about what they were doing, to feel happy being around them, to comfort them when they cried.

But I held back because the dam always threatened to break.

I know what that kind of life is like. And I will never say it was wasted time - it was a time of healing, of breathing, of being. But it is not how I want to live today.

I want a life that is bright and colorful.

I want a life that is noisy and full of laughter.

I want a life that reminds me to stop and appreciate every little thing around me.

I want a life that allows me to have a full range of emotion attached to it.

I want a life where I take risks, feel supported, try and fail and try again.

I want a life where I can say, “I don’t know” and be ok with that.

I want a life that is vibrant and playful and, yes, messy.

And you know what? I have that life. And while nothing is perfect and I still worry about things and I don’t have everything figured out, I’m still living a life that is really, truly, 100% authentically me.

And that is a truly freeing experience.

It can seem counterintuitive to feel freedom in a life so full of unknowns. I often tell my kids that we live in a house of “yes” - we say yes to creativity, to family, to fun, to play, to hard work, to new ideas, to making memories. And yes, it’s messy. And yes, we make mistakes. And yes, things change. But we’re living it. Each and every day.

Want to get more writing from Angela? Be sure to subscribe to her Love Letters. Because everyone should get love letters.