I’m a more the merrier girl. No really, I have 4 best friends, 2 damn near besties, and no less than 20 very close friends. And since I didn’t count I may actually be missing a few.

I value relationships, cherish them even…but even I know that there are times in your life when you are faced with the reality that everyone can’t go.

This became abundantly clear to me back in 2020. In Jan of that year, I rebranded and relaunched my invention business under the name, Creation Nation, to underscore the big vision I had for the work we were doing. In February, it had it’s first multiple 6 figure month and I felt vindicated. Like all of the work of the last 4 years had come to this very sweet moment. I remember I was in the process of buying my daughter a car for her 17th birthday, when the world shut down…and with all of those people home faced with their unresolved dreams for something more, the business took off!

That year the company grew from 3 employees to 11. My overhead went from $4k a month to $40k a month. The pressure was on and no one was there to carry it for me and so I carried it alone, proudly.

I was making more money than I’d ever made at that time, and I wanted to mark it somehow…but I wasn’t sure exactly how. And then one afternoon, while walking home from the nail salon, I saw someone drive by in a red Sebring convertible, and oh the nostalgia I felt. I wrote about my Sebring love this year.

I remember calling my bestie Brian and telling him that I’ve decided to buy myself a red convertible. So we both hopped online, like we normally do when talking about something in particular, and I spotted this beautiful manmade machine, in red…and it was not a Sebring.

Instead it was a red Mercedes SL450 and it was gorgeous.

I knew in that moment I wanted it to be mine, so I called the dealership to see if it was still available, hopped in an Uber, went for a quick test drive and bought it that night. Now listen, I’m sure there’s another newsletter in here somewhere about staying the course through thick and thin, and your dreams will come true.

But today’s newsletter is not that. It’s about the fact that for the first time in my life, the eldest daughter of 4, with 4 best friends, 2 damn near best friends, and no less than 20 very close friends, bought herself a 2 seater convertible.

And every time someone saw me in that car for the first time, their face would do this little double take, and they’d laugh and say, “Wow. It’s a two seater!” And I’d just smile back at them and say, “Yep. Everybody can’t go.”

For a long time I thought that line was about the car. It wasn’t. It was about where I was in my life. The people who’d been with me through everything, the ones who showed up when I was smaller and had less and was figuring it all out, a lot of them couldn’t make the next part of the trip with me. And it’s not because they didn’t love me. Not because they were bad people. They just couldn’t see what I was seeing anymore, and they weren’t built for the road I was about to be on. I had to be at peace with that.

When you're in the middle of a real change, rebuilding your life, shifting your identity, raising your expectations, chasing something you've never chased before, you start to see it clearly. The people around you aren't moving with you. Some of them are trying to keep you still, because your movement makes them question whether they could move too. Some of them aren't equipped for where you're headed, no matter how much they care about you.

And making yourself smaller so everyone stays comfortable, that costs you something. It’s not free. You just don’t see the bill until later.

Today’s newsletter is about that realization. What it looks like when you start to see who can't make the trip with you. What it takes to let them go without carrying guilt the whole way. And what it actually feels like once you're moving, lighter, on the other side of that decision.

There’s a very clear moment when this starts happening. You’re talking to someone you’ve known forever, someone who’s been a fixture in your life, and you mention something about where you’re headed. Maybe you’re sharing with them a new goal, a new way you want to live, a new standard you’re holding yourself to. And instead of getting excited with you, they go quiet. Or they laugh and say something like “must be nice,” in a tone that doesn’t quite land as a compliment.

The first time it happens you might brush it off. The second time it sits with you a little longer. By the third time, you start to put it together. It’s not that this person is awful. By the third time, you start to understand what's happening. It isn't that they're bad people.

It's that the version of you they know, the one they're comfortable with, the one who fits neatly into the life you used to share, doesn't match who you're becoming. And some part of them is bracing against that mismatch, whether they realize it or not.

Nobody really warns you that growth doesn’t just change your day to day, it changes the shape of your relationships, sometimes without you asking for that. People who loved the old you might genuinely not know what to do with the new one. And it shows up in small ways at first. The calls get shorter. The excitement feels a little forced. The check ins start to dry up. It rarely culminates in a big blow up, though that happens at time as well. One day things are just different.

Here's where it gets hard, because letting go of people doesn't feel like progress. It feels like loss, even when it's the right thing. You might catch yourself trying to shrink back down, trying to make yourself easier to be around, trying to slow down so someone else can catch up. That instinct comes from a real place. You don't want to seem like you think you're better than anyone. You don't want to be the person who left people behind.

But carrying someone who isn’t ready to move with you isn’t loyalty, it’s just delay dressed up as kindness. And the guilt you feel about outgrowing people usually has nothing to do with anything you actually did wrong, because most of the time you didn’t do anything wrong.

Letting go doesn’t mean you stop caring about someone. It doesn’t mean those years didn’t mean anything. It means you stop pretending that staying the same is the entry fee for being loved. Some people will catch up. Some won't. Either way, you get to keep moving, and you don't owe anyone an apology for that.

Besides, the guilt fades faster than you expect once you stop feeding it.

There's so much focus on the decision to let go that the actual experience of moving forward gets skipped over, like it's just supposed to feel good automatically. It doesn't, at least not right away.

The first thing you usually notice is how quiet it gets, like the silence you feel right after a door shuts. The conversations you used to have just aren’t happening anymore. People you used to talk to all the time stop calling back the way they used to.

And then, little by little, something starts to change within you. You realize how much energy you used to spend managing other people’s feelings about your life. Explaining yourself. Downplaying your wins. Making your plans sound smaller than they actually were so nobody felt weird about it.

But when you stop doing that, there’s suddenly room. Room to think bigger. Room to actually enjoy what you’re building instead of bracing yourself for someone’s reaction to it.

It can still feel lonely sometimes, sure…and I think that’s worth acknowledging instead of pretending the other side of this is just constant excitement. It’s not. It’s real. But eventually you start meeting people who are further along, who get it without you having to explain anything, who add something to where you’re going instead of pulling you back toward where you’ve been.

The truth is that two seater was never really about having less room for people. It was about finally having enough room for where I was actually going…without dragging people along for the ride who never really wanted to go.

Who in your life knows the old version of you better than they know the one you're becoming? When’s the last time you made something about your life sound smaller than it really was, just so someone else would feel more comfortable? What would happen if you stopped doing that, even just once this week?

Your action: pay attention to one moment this week where you feel the urge to play something down, an idea, a plan, a win.

And then don’t. Go big. Say the thing. Own the action. Celebrate the win.

I think a lot of us walk around with this central belief that if we just explain ourselves the right way, if we’re patient enough and careful enough, the people we love will eventually come around to wherever we’re going. And sometimes that’s true. But most of the time it is not, and the longer you wait around for everyone to catch up, the longer you stay parked exactly where you are.

That season was about finally admitting that the life I was building had already outgrown the version of me that needed everyone’s blessing before I could move. And while that’s a hard thing to sit with at first, it’s also one of the most freeing things I’ve ever come to terms with. You don’t need permission to move. You just need to be willing to go.

— Donteacia 💛