The Glow-Up Nobody Talks About

I have never looked and felt better than I do in the era where I stopped giving everyone access to me.

And yes, I mean that spiritually. Emotionally. Energetically.

Apparently physically too, because I have never received more compliments and stares in my life.

People keep saying, “You look different.” “Your energy has changed.” Which is a very polite way of saying:

You no longer look like you are carrying people who were never carrying you back.

Correct.

I am not.

And I did not realize how much of my life force leaked through unnecessary access until I closed a few doors.

Because the most transformative thing I ever did was not therapy, a new routine, or a three-step morning ritual.

It was this:

I became extremely selective about who gets access to me.

That changed everything.

Because your life changes when everybody no longer gets a front-row seat to your energy.

At some point, I stopped letting people sit close enough to have opinions about my life while contributing absolutely nothing useful to it. I finally looked around my life and thought:

Why am I available to people who only like me when I am easy to digest?

And my entire life shifted.

It started with the brutal realization that some people did not actually love me more when I was kind. They loved me more when I was convenient.

There is a very expensive difference.

Because being easy to be with can become a whole identity if you are not careful. The low-maintenance one. The woman who offers people forgiveness, emotional labor, the benefit of the doubt, and another chance.

And one day you wake up and realize that half your “relationships” depend on you having no needs, no limits, and no visible spine.

I would not call it a relationship but emotional customer service.

And I quit.

Let’s say it clearly, because people love to oversimplify things.

Not everyone I distanced myself from was evil.

They were just expensive. Energetically expensive.

And at some point, I could not afford them.