Nobody Puts Holly Hobbie in the Corner
your permission to shine
Years ago, my dear friend Aly committed to a year-long experiment she called The Year of No-Things.
No shopping.
No unnecessary purchases.
Only intentional buying of what she truly needed.
In a culture built on accumulation and immediacy, it was an unconventional and deliberate choice.
This EDIT isn’t about her experiment.
It’s about the responses it provoked and what those responses reveal.
When she shared what she was doing, three reactions surfaced, ones we later laughed about and noted who they came from over a shared bottle of wine on Friday afternoons.
Some people said, “That’s amazing.”
They recognized courage and met it with encouragement.
Others said, “I could never do that.”
Not as a dismissal, but as an acknowledgment of their own limitations.
And then there were those who said, “I wonder how long it will take you to fail.”
That response was never about Aly.
A strong person might brush it off. Aly did. She rarely inventories other people’s opinions. I admire that kind of strength and am learning to build it myself, like a muscle I can flex when my nervous system edges toward the precipice of fight or flight.
Most of us, though, aren’t wired that way.
Those comments sink quietly into the subconscious, the part of the brain already conditioned by misguided beliefs:
I’m not good enough.
I’m a failure.
I’m not worthy.
They’re the voices that wake us at 3 a.m., questioning whether what we’re doing is ridiculous, misguided, indulgent, or destined to amount to nothing. Not because it is, but because someone else subtly implied it.
What shows up in moments like this is shame.
I know this because shame has shaped me for a long time.
I carried it like a second skin. Like something protective. Like a baby blanket.
When I left for college, I took mine with me. Sad but true.
What follows is deeply personal.
