By Jocelyn Kate | JustJocelynThings – Nurturing Minds, Bodies, and Imaginations

Growth Isn’t the Absence of Mistakes

It is the willingness to see yourself clearly.

We talk about growth as if it is something you arrive at. Like there is a moment where you finally “get it,” where you are healed enough, self aware enough, evolved enough that you stop making the same mistakes and start moving through life cleanly.

But real growth does not work like that.

Growth does not erase your humanity. It does not delete old coping mechanisms or magically calm your nervous system forever. It does not make you immune to fear, grief, loneliness, or pressure. What it does is make you aware. And awareness, while powerful, is not always comfortable.

In fact, awareness can be painful.

There is a specific kind of discomfort that comes with realizing you know better and still watching yourself react from an old place. It is the moment you feel the gap between who you are becoming and how you showed up when things felt overwhelming. It is not ignorance anymore. It is consciousness. And that can feel heavier than not knowing at all.

This is the part of growth we do not romanticize.

Because growth does not mean you stop making mistakes. It means you stop being able to lie to yourself about them. You feel them immediately. You feel them in your body, in your chest, in your stomach, in the way your thoughts loop and your sleep changes. You feel them because something inside you knows this is not aligned anymore.

And that realization can be deeply unsettling.

I think we are taught, both subtly and directly, that being a “good” or “healed” person means being consistent all the time. Calm. Honest. Regulated. But the truth is, under pressure, stress, heartbreak, or fear, many of us revert. Not because we are broken or dishonest at our core, but because our nervous systems reach for what once kept us safe.

That does not excuse behavior. But it does explain it.

And explanation matters. Because without it, we turn mistakes into shame instead of information.

This year taught me that growth is not about presenting a perfected version of myself to the world. It is about being willing to sit with the uncomfortable reality that there are still parts of me that react from fear. Parts that want relief more than integrity when emotions feel too big. Parts that learned, a long time ago, that honesty could cost safety, connection, or belonging.

Those parts do not disappear just because I have done work. They show up when I am tired. When I am grieving. When something I deeply care about falls apart.

And the real work begins the moment I notice them.

Do I shame myself and spiral into self judgment.
Do I justify my behavior and minimize its impact.
Or do I slow down, tell the truth, and take responsibility even when it is uncomfortable.

That choice is where growth actually lives.

I am learning that becoming aligned is not about never slipping into old patterns. It is about noticing sooner. Staying with the discomfort longer. Choosing honesty over protection, even when honesty feels vulnerable.

Growth asks us to let go of the fantasy that one day we will be flawless. It asks us to replace that fantasy with something steadier. Accountability. Self compassion. The courage to look directly at ourselves without turning away.

This is where my year truly began. Not when I made bold external changes, but when I realized the most meaningful work happens quietly and internally, in moments no one else sees.

Moments where you have to admit that something was not aligned.
That something was not honest.
That something does not reflect who you want to be anymore.

And instead of running, rationalizing, or hardening, you choose to stay.

Growth does not ask me to be perfect.
It asks me to be honest.

I made a mistake that does not align with who I am.
I noticed it.
I took responsibility.
I am learning.

That is what real growth looks like.

---

When Choosing Yourself Does Not Protect You From Pain

This time last year, I made a decision that changed the structure of my life. I quit my nine to five. I stepped away from something predictable and chose to trust myself instead. At the time, it felt like courage. It also felt like relief.

I slowed down. I listened to my body. I paid attention to my nervous system in ways I never had before. Movement. Breath. Community. Rest. For the first time in a long time, I felt aligned.

What I did not expect was how exposed that alignment would make me.

Choosing yourself does not protect you from pain. When you are present, you feel more. There is no numbness to hide behind.

Within that same year, I experienced a kind of love that opened me deeply. And then I lost it.

The heartbreak disoriented me. It shook my sense of safety. I was not prepared for how deeply it would land or how quickly it would unravel me.

Grief did not look like sadness right away. It looked like movement. Distraction. Reaching outward.

I told myself I was fine before I actually was.

Growth does not make you invincible. It makes you tender.

---

Where I Lost Myself Again

When the heartbreak happened, I did not stay rooted in the version of myself I had been becoming. I slipped. I reached for old ways of coping. I let myself go in ways that I had promised myself I would not again.

In the relationship, I gave more of my energy than I could afford to give. I showed up before checking in with myself. I made space for someone else at the expense of my own. I ignored the quiet signals in my body that were telling me I was stretching past my limits.

At the time, it felt like love. It felt like effort. It felt like choosing connection.

But underneath that, I was slowly disappearing.

I made myself smaller in places where I should have stayed firm. I over explained. I over extended. I kept giving, even when I felt myself growing tired and unsteady. I told myself that if I just loved harder, stayed softer, stayed available, it would all work out.

That was not alignment. That was fear.

When the relationship ended, that fear had nowhere to go. I felt empty, exposed, and untethered. Instead of sitting with that feeling, I ran from it. I filled my time. I reached for distraction. I reached for people. I reached for attention. I wanted to feel wanted again, even briefly.

I acted in ways that did not reflect the woman I had been growing into. I returned to patterns I knew were not good for me. I let old versions of myself take the wheel because I did not yet know how to hold that much pain without abandoning myself.

It is hard to admit that you can do so much inner work and still unravel when something meaningful falls apart. It is hard to admit that awareness does not always equal embodiment. That knowing better does not always mean doing better, especially when your heart is broken.

But this is the truth.

I had not learned that lesson yet.

I had not learned how to protect my energy when I was grieving. I had not learned how to sit in loneliness without trying to fill it with someone else. I had not learned how to choose myself consistently when I felt rejected or unwanted.

And seeing that about myself hurt.

Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, sinking way. The kind of hurt that sits in your body and makes you realize you have crossed your own boundaries. The kind that makes you feel disconnected from yourself. The kind that does not go away until you tell the truth.

This was not a failure. But it was a wake up call.

I cannot keep giving my energy away and calling it healing. I cannot keep confusing intensity with intimacy. I cannot keep abandoning myself in moments of pain and expect to feel whole.

This year taught me that losing yourself does not always look obvious. Sometimes it looks like trying too hard. Loving too much. Reaching outward instead of turning inward.

I see now where I let myself go.
I see why I did it.
And I see what I need to do differently.

This is not about punishing myself for the past.
It is about choosing to stay with myself moving forward..

---

The Moment I Crossed My Own Line

There was a moment where I knew I had crossed a line with myself.

It was not loud or dramatic. It was subtle and internal. My body knew before my mind could rationalize it. The heaviness. The tightness in my chest. The pit in my stomach. The unmistakable feeling that I had stepped out of alignment with myself.

I was not honest, and it was wrong.

The first lie happened early in the relationship. It was about my debt. I minimized the amount because I was embarrassed. I did not want to admit how much I was carrying, and if I am honest, I did not want to fully face it myself yet. I was afraid of being judged. Afraid of being seen as unstable or irresponsible. Afraid that being fully honest would change how I was perceived by someone I loved.

That was the first moment I chose protection over truth.

The second lie came later, after the relationship had ended, when there was still hope that we might rebuild. Trust was already fragile. Everything felt delicate. I was scared that the full truth would end any chance of reconciliation before it could begin.

I said I had only hooked up with one person when I had hooked up with two.

Again, the motivation was fear. Fear of losing something I still cared about. Fear of being seen differently. Fear that honesty would cost me the connection I was trying to repair.

That does not excuse the lie. But it explains it.

The guilt was immediate. Not dramatic, not performative. Physical. Heavy. I felt it in my body before my mind could rationalize it away. I knew I had crossed my own line, not because someone else caught me, but because I could feel myself out of alignment.

That feeling mattered.

It told me that this is not who I want to be. That even when I am scared, embarrassed, or grieving, I do not want to build connection on omission or half truths. I do not want to protect myself in ways that cost me my integrity.

So I told the truth.

I corrected what I had said. I took responsibility without justifying it. I accepted the consequences without trying to control the outcome. I honored boundaries and slowed down instead of escalating or asking for reassurance.

I am sharing this not because I am proud of it, but because it is real. Because it is human. Because many people lie under pressure, especially when they are afraid of losing love, safety, or connection. And because growth does not happen by pretending we did better than we did.

It happens when we tell the truth and stay.

I made a mistake that does not align with who I am.
I noticed it.
I took responsibility.
I am learning.

---

What This Taught Me About Myself

This experience showed me exactly where my work truly is.

Not in becoming more impressive.
Not in appearing healed.
Not in convincing anyone, including myself, that I have it all together.

My work is in learning how to stay with myself when things feel hard. When my instinct is to move, explain, fix, or disappear. When discomfort rises and every part of me wants relief instead of responsibility.

I am learning how to tolerate emotional pain without reaching for protection that compromises my values. How to sit in discomfort without trying to shape the narrative or soften the truth so it lands more easily. How to trust that honesty, even when it costs me something, is safer than avoidance and far more sustainable than pretending.

For a long time, hiding felt like survival. Minimizing felt like self preservation. Silence felt safer than being seen clearly. I learned early how to keep parts of myself tucked away, especially the parts I was ashamed of, the parts that felt unfinished or messy or hard to explain.

But that way of living does not work for me anymore.

I am done hiding from my mistakes. I am done carrying shame in my body as if it serves a purpose. I am done pretending that avoiding the truth is the same as healing.

It is not.

Owning my mistakes does not mean I am proud of them. It means I am willing to look at them without flinching. It means I am choosing responsibility over denial, growth over comfort, and truth over fear. It means I trust myself enough to face what I have done and learn from it instead of running.

I shared this because I want to live aligned. Because I want my inner world and outer world to match. Because I do not want to build connection on omission, half truths, or fear. Because real intimacy, with others and with myself, requires honesty.

Making a mistake does not make me dishonest. Avoiding it would.

Awareness is the line for me. The moment I noticed my actions were not aligned with my values, I stopped. I did not bury it. I did not justify it away. I did not move forward pretending nothing had happened.

That matters more to me than being seen as perfect ever could.

I do not want to be someone who bends her integrity under pressure. I do not want to be someone who disappears when things feel uncomfortable. I want to be someone who can pause, breathe, and tell the truth even when fear is loud and the outcome is uncertain.

This was not a step backward. It was a lesson I had not integrated yet.

And now I am integrating it.

Integration looks like slowing down.
It looks like choosing honesty before urgency.
It looks like letting discomfort pass through me instead of acting it out.
It looks like trusting myself to handle the consequences of truth.

I made mistakes.
I can own them.
I can learn from them.
I can grow because of them.

That is who I am choosing to be now.

---

Becoming Takes Time, and It Takes Feeling

We like to believe growth happens in moments. A realization. A decision. A clean turning point where everything finally makes sense and the work is done.

But real growth rarely looks like that.

It is slow. It is repetitive. It unfolds in layers. It asks you to meet the same edges again and again, each time with a little more honesty than before. You do not outgrow old patterns once and for all. You learn to notice them sooner. You learn to stay with yourself longer. You learn to choose differently in smaller, quieter ways.

And almost always, growth is uncomfortable.

Flowers cannot grow without rain. We know this, but we forget what it actually means. Rain is not gentle. It is not convenient. It soaks the ground. It makes everything heavy. It changes the landscape before anything new can take root.

We are no different.

We cannot grow and change without feeling. We cannot become without allowing ourselves to be touched by pain, loss, regret, longing, and joy. Avoiding feeling does not protect us. It keeps us stuck in the same cycles, repeating the same lessons until we are finally willing to stay present with them.

I was reminded recently that I believe the purpose of life is to feel. Not to be perfect. Not to bypass pain. But to experience this world fully, in a body, with a heart that can break and heal and open again.

Feeling is hard. Sitting with discomfort is hard. Letting yourself feel shame without becoming it is hard. Allowing grief to move through you instead of numbing it out is hard.

But it is also how we learn.
It is how we grow.
It is how we become human in a deeper way.

Our souls do not take lessons from the moments we avoided. They take something from the moments we stayed. From the times we felt pain and chose to heal instead of harden. From the times we told the truth even when it cost us comfort.

Growth is not linear because life is not linear. Pain does not arrive in neat sequences. Love does not wait until you feel ready. Loss does not ask permission. We are shaped in the middle of living, not at the end of it.

If you are reading this and recognizing yourself, I want you to know this.

You are not behind because you are still learning.
You are not broken because you reacted from an old place.
You are not failing because it took you longer than you hoped.

Becoming is not about getting it right quickly. It is about staying honest long enough for change to settle into your bones. It is about letting the rain fall. Letting yourself feel it. Trusting that something is growing beneath the surface even when all you can see is the storm.

Growth does not ask you to be flawless.
It asks you to stay present.
It asks you to feel.

And if you are here, still reflecting, still choosing to look at yourself clearly instead of turning away, that is growth happening in real time.

It may not be loud.
It may not be finished.
But it is real.

And that is enough.