Dear reader,

I realize the above title is strange and may not inspire you to read on, but I hope you do. I promise the whole blog isn’t about dry heaving and doesn’t contain any TMI moments. You’ll understand the title if you keep reading.. or you may read this whole blog and still not understand the title and that’s ok too. Just rest assured you will not get to the end of this blog and feel like you need to dry heave.. or at least I hope you don’t.

Recently, I was sitting on the bathroom floor enjoying a short intermission in a particularly bad bout of dry heaving, which has recently become a daily occurrence for me. We have become close frenemies lately. As I was enjoying my short intermission, I was scrolling on Tik-Tok because what else does one do when trying to distract themselves that they are starting their day on the bathroom floor. Before the Tik-Tok scrolling began I was taking a mental inventory of the cleaning that needed to be done in said bathroom, but that didn’t seem like the most helpful way to enjoy my short intermission from dry heaving. As I was scrolling, I came upon a podcast clip of a therapist. She was being interviewed and she said to the podcast host “Whatever someone is not changing, they are choosing.” Suddenly, the fact I was sitting on the bathroom floor prepared to get sick was not at the forefront at my mind. Instead I was sitting on the bathroom floor feeling angry.

I am a quote fanatic. I have a journal just for quotes and the photos on my phone are almost equally a mix of quotes, nature, and/or dogs. I think quotes are little snippets of wisdom that make us think. The above mentioned quote didn’t make me think anything but, “That’s easy for you to say. What about the things people can’t, aren’t ready to, don’t have the resources to change?” I realize the interviewed therapist was trying to get across the point that if there’s things in our lives that need changing and we aren’t changing them then we are making the choice to have them in our lives. It’s similar to the quote, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

What angered me about the quote was how it reeks of judgement and assumption and how it doesn’t take into account any kind of context. It doesn’t take into account fear, which is something that holds many people back from making any kind of changes in their life. It doesn’t take into account someone who has cancer, a chronic illness, a disability, etc that can’t be changed and that they certainly didn’t choose It doesn’t take into account someone struggling with mental health issues who can’t work due to their mental health issues and therefore doesn’t have health insurance. They certainly aren’t choosing to struggle with their mental health. The system and the lack of affordable access to mental health care is choosing for them. It doesn’t take into account someone in an abusive relationship who lives in fear everyday and knows that leaving is often the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship and how what they are choosing y staying is safety not continuing to be abused.

I think its easy when our lives are going well to look at others and think they should do more of this, less of this, change this, be this, etc and the fact they aren’t means they are choosing what’s happening to them, the place they are in, how they feel etc. Unfortunately, life and human choices are far more complicated and can’t be explained by a simple quote.

The next time you find yourself judging someone and/or getting frustrated with someone for the choices they have or haven’t made, stop yourself. Remind yourself you are not on their journey and you don’t have the same lived experiences they do. Remind yourself their journey is their journey and they are the only one that gets to decide where their journey goes. Remind yourself you don’t know best and assuming you do is not helpful for you or for them. Remind yourself everyone’s journey looks different, follows a different path, and meanders through different seasons and different doesn’t mean wrong, less than, a mistake, not enough, etc. Different simply means different. Remind yourself everyone has their own timeline for changing and it doesn’t have to match your own timeline and I’ll let you in on a little secret, it often doesn’t.

Remind yourself that we are all doing our best… even those of us starting our day on the bathroom floor looking at TikTok.