When the Weight Begins to Slip Off Your Shoulders

There are moments in life when something doesn’t break,

it simply loosens.

Quietly.

Almost imperceptibly.

Like the first give of a knot that has been holding for years.

That’s what’s been happening in me.

A soft unravelling.

A slow exhale.

A beginning I didn’t see coming.

For most of my life, I carried purpose like a calling and a contract.

I believed a created life meant living inside service —

guiding people, helping them remember who they are, offering my own healing as a bridge.

And beneath even that was a truth I never spoke out loud:

If I turn my pain into purpose,

if I use what I’ve lived to help others,

then maybe everything I survived will have been worth it.

It was a beautiful instinct.

It kept me upright.

It shaped my identity.

But it also wrapped my life in a quiet, relentless responsibility

I never questioned.

Until now.

The Realization That Surprised Me

A question arrived one day — simple, but seismic:

What if I didn’t come here to make money?

What if the most aligned thing I could do

is earn what I need in a way that is light, easy, and clean…

so the rest of my life is free for what my soul actually came here to do?

The moment I let that question in, something shifted.

It was as though the lens I had been looking through —

the Western, empire-shaped, purpose-equals-productivity lens —

slid slightly out of place.

And suddenly I could see a different landscape.

One where my worth was no longer tied to usefulness.

One where my purpose didn’t need to be performed.

One where my life didn’t have to be a repayment plan for everything I had endured.

It was disorienting.

And profoundly freeing.

The Weight I Didn’t Know I Was Carrying

Some people inherit land or heirlooms.

I inherited responsibility.

The kind that doesn’t announce itself.

The kind that weaves into your bones.

Be the one who holds it together.

Be the one who carries the meaning.

Be the one who turns wounds into wisdom.

Be the one who helps others heal so the cycle finally breaks.

It wasn’t taught to me explicitly.

It was absorbed.

Lived.

Performed.

Perfected.

And somewhere along the way, purpose fused with obligation

until I could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.

I didn’t recognize it as a burden.

It felt noble.

Sacred, even.

But noble burdens are still burdens, love.

They are simply the kind we carry so long

we forget our shoulders were meant to move.

The Beginning of Letting Go

This new inquiry —

this realization that maybe purpose wasn’t what I thought it was —

did something unexpected.

It loosened the belief that I am responsible for everyone else’s becoming.

It loosened the narrative that my healing must become public offering.

It loosened the pressure to make meaning out of everything that ever hurt.

It loosened the identity of being the one who holds it together,

the one who knows,

the one who leads,

the one who carries.

And in that loosening, a truth emerged:

My life is allowed to be for me.

Not in a defensive way.

Not in a withdrawing way.

In a gentle, human, soul-honouring way.

A way that says:

I can love without carrying.

I can guide without holding.

I can contribute without sacrificing.

I can exist without having to justify my existence

through service.

A New Way of Seeing Purpose

What if purpose is not the work I do,

but the presence I bring?

What if it isn’t a job description or a spiritual résumé,

but a frequency —

a way of moving through the world that has nothing to do with productivity?

What if the true purpose of my life

is simply to live it

in the most joyful, peaceful, expansive way I can?

What if purpose has room for:

rest

and softness

and desire

and wandering

and creation that belongs only to me?

What if purpose is what fills me,

not what empties me?

These questions feel like sunlight on my skin —

warm, surprising,

awakening something that was always mine.

This Is Not an Ending. This Is the First Real Beginning.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion.

I’m not rushing to define anything.

All I know is that a weight I’ve carried for as long as I can remember

has begun to slip.

And in its place, something spacious is forming —

a new relationship with my own life,

one not built on duty or redemption,

but on truth and freedom.

I can feel myself creating from a different place now.

A gentler place.

A truer place.

A place where I am no longer the steward of everyone else’s path,

but simply a human being

allowed to live

and choose

and desire

and breathe

without needing to earn my right to be here.

And maybe —

just maybe —

this is what purpose looks like

when you finally stop carrying the world.