The part of you that hurts is the part that is still fighting. The part of you trying to tell you — it is not too late, actually. You are not behind. You are capable. You can change your life. Numbing that pain is silencing your most vital inner guidance, and that is what a likewise hurting world attempts to do. Nothing outside of us can stop us unless it implants enough doubt to make us stop ourselves. The environments that hold us back do this most persistently — unable to reconcile their own lack of progress, we are made to feel guilty for wanting to move forward with our own. Your job is to turn inward. It is to listen to your heart. It is to know that the only person who has to answer to your life is you. The only person who will carry your regrets is you. The only person who will be there for you every hour of every day of your existence is you. This is not a selfishness, it is a releasing. It is realizing that there is nothing we can do for others if we ourselves are empty. There is no good we can add if we do not first ground ourselves in something real, if we do not fill ourselves with enough love that it pours out and over. That is how we built a more beautiful world, at the end of the day. When we begin to bring a blossoming to the only place we ever could — inside our own selves. Stepping away from what you’ve known does not mean you are leaving the only good thing that will ever happen to you. The life you built is an extension of what is inside of you, and you take that with you wherever you go. Because that part of you will always be there — the part that loves and aches and tries to talk to you. The part that is is telling you right now: keep going, there is more to life than this.