Letting go isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. Discover what it really means to take flight, reclaim your peace, and live aligned with who you’re becoming.
If you’ve been following this From Fog to Flight series, you know we started with Marcus — a man searching for clarity, peace, and direction in the middle of a life that no longer fit.
But somewhere between his story and mine, the lines began to blur.
By the time I wrote Part 4, this series wasn’t just about him anymore. It became about me, too.
Because that’s the thing about coaching — when it’s honest, when it’s real — it holds up a mirror for the coach as much as it does for the client.
While guiding Marcus through his friction, I realized I was still in mine.
While helping him name the tension between obligation and desire…
I had to confront my own pattern of self-abandonment.
I saw myself clearly in his story — taking responsibility for what wasn’t mine, ready (again) to shrink my dreams to make room for someone else’s comfort.
And that’s when it hit me:
My anger wasn’t about the other person.
It was about me — and my inability to let go of what doesn’t belong to me.
That awareness changed everything.
✈️ Taking Flight: What It Really Means
Taking flight sounds like freedom — but in the context of this series, it’s not just about soaring. It’s about what happens after the fight, after the formation, when you finally start living aligned with who you really are.
It’s about honoring your transformation in real time — not waiting until the world validates your progress.
Flight is the integration of everything this journey has taught you:
- Clarity from the fog
- Conviction through the flicker
- Endurance during the friction
- Identity forged in formation
But flight doesn’t mean everything is fixed.
It means you trust yourself enough to move forward — even when the wind is still wild.
💡 What I Learned About Myself
This series started with Marcus’s story — a man doing the best he could with what he had. But by Part 4, that story had become my mirror.
While working with Marcus, I realized I was still in my own friction.
In fact, just like Marcus, I was carrying weight that didn’t belong to me.
He was trying to manage a family dynamic out of loyalty — and I was doing the same in my own life.
I found myself anxious and resentful toward someone else’s behavior… but when I sat with it, I realized the anger wasn’t really about them.
It was about me — and my old habit of reshaping my life to accommodate others, especially family, even when it cost me my peace.
As I wrote Marcus’s follow-up notes, I had to sit with this:
I wasn’t just witnessing his struggle. I was living it.
“You’ve been projecting calm while managing chaos, wearing strength like armor while silently unraveling inside.”
— Session 4 Recap
That truth wasn’t just for Marcus. It was for me, too.
I realized I’d fallen back into that same pattern: over-responsibility masked as compassion, and people-pleasing dressed up as service.
But then I remembered:
Helping others is part of who I am — but I’m not called to save anyone who refuses to save themselves.
Support has a limit. And peace has a price. And if I abandon myself to make others comfortable, then I’ve gained nothing from this journey.
🕊️ What Taking Flight Really Requires
Taking flight isn’t about having it all figured out.
It’s about moving with intention — even when your feet still feel heavy and the path still feels unclear.
Flight requires:
- Trusting your clarity over your conditioning
- Choosing your values even when your emotions scream otherwise
- Letting go of people, patterns, and pain that keep you tethered to a version of you that no longer exists
And most of all?
Flight requires ongoing work.
Not a one-time breakthrough.
Not a pretty story arc.
But daily decisions to confront what’s pulling you backward — and still choosing to move forward anyway.
📘 The Coaching Mirror: How Moving Him Forward Moved Me
As I worked with Marcus, I kept noticing a familiar tension in his words:
“I feel like I’m always responsible for fixing what’s broken… even when it’s not mine to fix.”
That line echoed in my head long after our session ended.
Because the truth was — I felt the same way.
I was still carrying emotional weight for people in my life.
Still considering adjusting my dreams — again — to accommodate someone else’s comfort.
Still feeling the pull to protect, provide, or preserve someone else’s life… at the expense of my own alignment.
And it wasn’t just familiar. It was exhausting.
But something shifted as I coached him toward clarity.
In helping him name the narrative that said “Your peace isn’t as important as their comfort,”
I began challenging that voice in myself, too.
“It’s okay to have needs. It’s okay to prioritize your peace. You are not abandoning others when you stop abandoning yourself.”
That’s what taking flight really looks like:
- Doing the emotional excavation in real time
- Identifying the old scripts that want to pull you back
- And choosing, again and again, not to shrink
Because here’s the truth I’m still learning in this exact season:
🛑 The guilt will show up.
🛑 The inner critic will try to sound like reason.
🛑 The shame will whisper that you’re selfish for setting boundaries.
But if you listen to those voices for too long, they’ll convince you to stay grounded — safe, small, and stuck in someone else’s story.
And I’m done with that.
Taking flight means I’m actively doing the work to understand:
- Why I’ve held onto responsibility that isn’t mine
- How my identity was shaped by over-functioning
- What voices need to be silenced so the real me can speak
It’s not easy. It’s not always graceful.
But it’s necessary.
Because I can’t ask my clients to do what I’m unwilling to do myself.
🧠 The Psychology of Letting Go
Letting go sounds simple. But for many of us, especially those who’ve spent years holding things — responsibilities, people, unspoken expectations — it can feel like betrayal.
Not of others, but of the version of ourselves that always stepped in, always showed up, always sacrificed.
As I reflected on my own internal struggle in this chapter, I started to see the psychological threads beneath the surface.
I wasn’t just dealing with burnout.
I was reckoning with patterns I’d been carrying for years — and for the first time, I could name them.
Over-Responsibility
In psychology, this pattern is known as unmitigated communion — a tendency to care for others to the point of self-neglect. It sounds noble, and in some ways, it is. But it becomes dangerous when your life starts bending to meet the needs of people who refuse to meet their own.
I saw this in my client — and I saw it in me.
When we feel responsible for someone else’s choices, we begin to abandon our own clarity. We shrink our vision to make their comfort possible.
And that’s not love. That’s self-erasure.
The Weight of “Should”
Karen Horney, a psychologist ahead of her time, called it the “tyranny of the shoulds.” That voice that says:
- “You should help, no matter the cost.”
- “You shouldn’t walk away.”
- “You should be strong enough to carry it all.”
Those shoulds don’t speak from your purpose.
They speak from your programming.
I realized much of my anxiety wasn’t about someone else’s chaos — it was about my guilt in not being willing to fix it or carry it. It was the fear that saying “no” would make me selfish. Or worse… seen as someone who had changed.
But here’s what I’ve come to accept:
Growth will change how people see you.
And your job is not to make your evolution more palatable for those still clinging to the past version of you.
The Fear of Becoming
Abraham Maslow called it the Jonah Complex — a fear not of failure, but of success. Of stepping into your full power, because you know once you do, there’s no going back.
I felt that, too.
Because to take flight is to admit you’re no longer available for what used to define you. And that requires a death of sorts — the letting go of who you were so you can rise into who you’re becoming.
✈️ Embracing the Ongoing Journey
Taking flight isn’t a one-time event; it’s a continuous process of self-awareness, boundary-setting, and growth. It involves recognizing patterns like over-responsibility, challenging internalized expectations, and confronting fears that hold us back.
By doing this inner work, you’re not only transforming your own life but also modeling the path for others. Your journey underscores the profound impact of coaching — for both the client and the coach — in facilitating meaningful, lasting change.
💥 5 Ways to Take Flight if it feels safer to stay grounded
Let’s not sugarcoat it:
Taking flight requires more than clarity.
It requires a cost.
It means walking away from what’s familiar — and sometimes, who’s familiar — to finally live in alignment with your own voice, not the one others have assigned to you.
If you’re serious about your becoming, here’s where the rubber meets the runway:
1. Tell the Whole Truth — Even If It Wrecks the Narrative
You can’t take flight carrying lies.
The story you’ve told yourself — that you have to stay, that you have to fix it, that you’re the only one who can — is keeping you stuck.
Speak the truth out loud.
Not the rehearsed version.
“I’m just doing what’s best for everyone.”
“This is what I’m supposed to do.”
“I can handle it — I always have.”
These are the lines we repeat because they’re socially acceptable. They protect our image. They keep the peace — but they cost us ourselves.
Speak The Raw Truth:
“I’m exhausted from being the fixer.”
“I’ve sacrificed my peace for someone else’s comfort.”
“I’m afraid of what will happen if I stop saving them — but I’m even more afraid of losing myself.”
The raw truth is what your soul has been trying to say underneath the mask of responsibility.
It’s messy. Unfiltered. And honest.
But it’s the only version that leads to freedom.
Truth clears the runway.
You don’t rise by pretending.
2. Choose Discomfort Over Disconnection
Every time you silence your needs to keep the peace, you lose a piece of yourself.
Flight asks you to sit in the discomfort of:
- Disappointing people who were only attached to your past version
- Being misunderstood without needing to explain yourself
- Leaving space empty instead of filling it with distractions
It hurts.
But it heals, too.
Your peace is not found in control.
It’s found in the courage to be misunderstood and move anyway.
3. Detach From the Outcome — Commit to the Alignment
Flight doesn’t guarantee a soft landing.
Sometimes it looks like losing money, missing opportunities, or letting go of relationships you thought were forever.
But what you gain?
Yourself.
Stop measuring success by what shows up in your bank account or inbox.
Start measuring it by how fully you’re showing up in your own life.
Your alignment is the win — not the applause it gets.
4. Burn the Backup Plan
As long as you’re keeping one foot in the safety net, you’re not flying — you’re hovering.
This doesn’t mean you act recklessly.
It means you stop rehearsing failure before you even try.
Delete the draft text.
Close the job search tab.
Cancel the fallback plan that keeps you from giving this version of you a real chance.
You’ll never rise with both feet planted in the past.
5. Forgive Yourself for Playing Small
You didn’t know better before.
But now you do.
You know what exhaustion feels like.
You know what self-abandonment costs.
You know the price of staying silent.
Forgive the part of you that thought survival was enough.
Then thank them for getting you here.
But let them know:
You’re not just surviving anymore.
You’re flying.
✈️ Final Thought: This Is What Becoming Looks Like
This isn’t just a blog series.
It’s been a mirror — one I had to look into, too.
I started writing about Marcus. But somewhere around Part 3, his story stopped being separate from mine.
Because I wasn’t just documenting a journey.
I was living one.
Here’s what I know now:
I’ve spent most of my life stepping up — for my family, for my friends, for the roles I was asked to play.
But somewhere along the way, I started stepping around myself.
And I didn’t realize how much it was costing me — my peace, my clarity, my breath — until I started doing this work in real time.
This final chapter?
It isn’t a mic drop.
It’s a soul check.
Right now, I’m choosing me.
Not out of bitterness.
Not out of ego.
But out of reverence for the man I’m becoming.
I’m learning to protect my clarity like my life depends on it — because it does.
I’m choosing boundaries that feel like betrayal to others but freedom to me.
I’m still catching myself in old patterns, still silencing voices that say, “You should be further by now.”
But I’m showing up anyway.
Because growth doesn’t mean the demons stop showing up.
It means you stop letting them drive.
I’m not where I used to be.
I’m not yet where I want to be.
But I’m no longer pretending I’m okay living in the middle.
I’m choosing flight — even with shaking hands.
And I’m trusting that every step forward, no matter how small, is sacred.
If you’ve followed this journey, I hope you see what I’ve come to believe with everything in me:
You’re allowed to evolve.
You’re allowed to protect your peace.
You’re allowed to take flight.
Let’s not go back.
🚀 Ready to Rise?
If this series stirred something in you…
If you’ve been walking through your own fog, wrestling with your own friction, or standing in the heat of formation —
Don’t stop here.
You’re not alone in this work.
And you don’t have to navigate your next chapter without support.
📞 Book a Discovery Call:
Let’s talk through where you are and what’s next. This isn’t a sales pitch — it’s a space to breathe, unpack, and explore your next right move with a guide who’s walking the path too.
🌀 Start (or Revisit) the Journey:
- Part 1: The Fog– When life feels heavy and unclear
- Part 2: The Flicker– Recognizing the shift when something no longer fits
- Part 3: The Friction– Navigating resistance when you start to grow
- Part 4: The Formation– When the work gets real and you start building a life that fits
💬 Join the Conversation:
What did this series bring up for you?
What are you ready to release, protect, or pursue?
Drop your thoughts below.
Your insight might be the flicker someone else needs to keep going.
That line about something “dying off” hit me too when I wrote it, because that’s exactly what transformation feels like. It’s not always about something ending around us — sometimes it’s something evolving within us. And you’re right… it does feel like growing pains. Holy ones.
It’s no coincidence that this feeling mirrors what you experienced 30 years ago. Your soul has navigated these shifts before — but this time, you’re meeting it with more clarity, more truth, and deeper intention.
You’re not too late. You’re right on time.
And if you ever want to unpack what this next chapter could look like — in a space where you don’t have to hold it all together — I’d love to support you in that.
If you want to go deeper, I invite you to book a strategy session.
You’re already doing the work by naming it. Keep rising, Beth.