I Quit.
Quitting is a kind of love letter to myself—each resignation a careful unbinding, a releasing. Here, in the aftermath, I am mapping my own forgiveness: thirty days of letting go, of understanding that freedom sometimes sounds like silence, sometimes like a breath finally allowed to expand.
My children and I, we are a small constellation realigning. The dust—oh, the dust—has found its gentle resting place, soft as memory, light as possibility. We are learning the sacred arithmetic of less: subtraction as restoration, simplicity as our most intimate prayer.
A few months ago, I was interviewed for a podcast and briefly stunted with their closing question; "what goal do you have for the remainder of the year?” I was living inside survival's tight grip, that enclosing corner of constant managing, of holding breath between heartbeats. When she asked, I felt that disorientation—that moment between sleep and waking where your body is confused where to place your feet, if you’re even ready to wake up.
"Less," I said. And the word came out like a prayer, like a wound beginning to heal itself. Less: not poverty, but abundance distilled. Less: not absence, but a radical presence. My spirit knew this before my mind could stitch together the language, before my tongue could translate the feeling into sound. It was a manifesto whispered before it was understood, a message written in invisible ink that only reveals itself when held against something luminous. Truth telling.
My heart was already preparing the ground, turning over soil I didn't yet know how to name.
What exhausts you? What are you attached to that is causing you pain? I've learned that pain isn't just something that happens to you—it's a language you can translate, a geography you can navigate.
Every day is a chance to rewrite yourself. Not perfectly. Not without trembling. But with intention. With the wild, radical belief that your desire is its own kind of fuel. Movement isn't always grand—sometimes it's just showing up, brick by uncertain brick, knowing that "ready" is a myth we've been sold, and choice is the truest rebellion.
Life keeps lifing, they say. And yes. And still: we are here, choosing, always choosing.
There are no perfect angles when it comes to leaving. Only the sharp edge of necessity cutting through what once felt essential. Thirty days ago, I began a collection of endings: a full-time job, a board position, my debt—all of them falling away like autumn leaves that once seemed so vital to the tree.
I've mapped this territory before. Years ago now (hard to believe), I left a marriage and watched my life rearrange itself around the absence. Now here I am again, standing in the familiar doorway of departure. The job was everything it promised to be, which is different from everything I needed it to become. I could catalog its shortcomings like pressing flowers into a book, but that's not the story I'm trying to preserve here.
The board position fit an old version of me. It required time (which had grown scarce), availability (which had become precious), and money (which flowed from different tributaries now). Remove the corporate donorship, the surplus of hours, and what remains? The skeleton of something that no longer holds flesh.
The debt wasn't massive, but it was persistent—an auto loan that followed me like a shadow at noon, two credit cards holding memories of things I thought I needed. I cleared them all, not because the numbers were overwhelming, but because they anchored me to a life that had begun to feel like someone else's story.
How many times must we learn the same lesson before we recognize its face in the crowd? My friend Joe says "the beatings will continue until morale improves," but I'm starting to think morale improves when we finally learn to dodge the beating altogether.
Everything I've cut away was once enough—was once a perfect fit in the puzzle of my life. But "enough" is a horizon that moves as we walk toward it. I find, as years collect, that my definition of enough grows smaller, cleaner, more essential. I shed, burn, kill, dump, remove, and make space.
What is enough? The question echoes differently in each season of our lives. Today's enough looks nothing like yesterday's enough, and tomorrow's enough might be smaller still—a handful of moments that fit perfectly in the palm of your life. I remain ever culling and opening my heart and energetic vortex.
So, yes. With peace and pride, I quit.
