While patience can be virtuous, it can also become a socially rewarded form of self-abandonment, keeping us trapped in a devastating loop of hope untethered from the grounding force of action.

There comes a point when it’s time to stop endlessly wading through riptides and relentless currents and move toward the shoreline, rather than wait for the answer to arrive through someone or something outside ourselves.

Now let me back this up a bit because I’m not saying we should lack patience. Personally, I have a tremendous capacity to see things from different angles, hold a steady sense of duality, and practice patience in ways that are relational and meaningful.

I am also not advising that you bulldoze your way through people, life, or circumstances.

What I am saying is that when it comes to the individual direction of my life, I noticed where I fell into the habit of dulling my instinct to act because, for many years, I felt my need to initiate in the moment was unruly, unreasonable, and unrealistic.

There was also a period in my life when I was constantly told to “just be patient,” and every time I heard it, something inside me would cringe. My energy would completely contract, and my irritation would skyrocket into the ether.

Later, I learned that contraction was my body signaling that something about the instruction felt fundamentally misaligned for me. Instead of listening to that feeling, I’d soften my urge to act and play the all-too-familiar waiting game.

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I think patience is a spectrum, and where we fall on that spectrum and why we land there is the space I’m navigating.

I spent far too long “waiting for the right time” instead of creating the conditions to act, and it wasn't until my late twenties that I became more invested in studying Human Design, astrology, somatics, and energy work to begin to better understand my relationship with action and how much internalized conditioning I needed to break free from.

For reference, in Human Design, I’m a Splenic Manifestor with a 6/2 profile, and learning this was one of the first steps toward realizing what my energy is actually designed for.

Spoiler alert — it wasn’t being endlessly patient. My energy is oriented toward initiating, creating movement, and forging my own path. That movement begins with an internal spark. It's a quiet, unmistakable knowing of when it’s time to act, even before the world around me offers confirmation.

In astrology, my natal Mars is in Aries, and Mars is at home here, giving action, desire, assertiveness, and a strong instinct to move. The kicker is, it’s in retrograde in my chart, so it can complicate things.

So what does all this mean?

Together, it gave language to something I experienced long before I knew how to name it: I carry a strong impulse to take action (Manifestor), AND I have also struggled to trust that impulse (Mars Retrograde in Aries). Sometimes I question, contain, or negotiate action before allowing myself to fully express it, landing in a space where my natural energy outruns the social norms around patience, and I stay in the in-between longer than is healthy.

Working WITH this energy now looks like recognizing the difference between action arising from embodied knowing and action driven by a need to escape discomfort.

I discovered that recklessness often moves because stillness feels unbearable, but discernment-driven impatience moves because remaining still would require overriding what has already become clear.

I don’t use these systems as fixed instructions for who I should be, but as languages and tools to help me investigate what my energy may already be revealing.

You don’t have to be a Manifestor (or into Human Design/Astrology) for any of this to ring true, but if you are into it, it can be a gateway to understanding that our energy exists within the larger ecosystem of who we are, what we are uniquely designed for, and why.

To be clear, this isn’t to say that using these tools means we abandon all aspects of patience, but I do think it’s about developing discernment to recognize when it creates space for growth and when it prevents us from trusting that enough is enough.

Enough of that job that quietly drains our souls.

Enough of that pattern that keeps repeating itself.

Enough pretending to want less.

Enough outsourcing our energy.

Enough performing niceness to be liked, accepted, or understood.

Simply….ENOUGH.

So yes, timing is important, AND timing is also what you do with it while you have it, because none of us has an infinite amount of time on this earth.

So how do we begin to appreciate loss of patience as a gift? First, by reminding ourselves that impatience is information.

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Here are some questions to navigate:

• What is my energy type, and what action does it naturally support?

• What has my body already accepted that my mind is still negotiating?

• Am I being patient, or am I postponing a truth I don’t want to face?

• What pattern am I waiting for someone else to interrupt?

• What am I repeatedly tolerating in the name of being understanding?

• If I stopped waiting for permission, rescue, or certainty, what aligned action would become available to me?

Embodiment has been where I’ve learned to discern the difference between waiting from wisdom and waiting from fear.

Running out of patience isn’t always a failure or a measure of our character. Sometimes, it marks the return of our aliveness: the moment we acknowledge what we want and choose to embody it. It means moving toward a life that isn’t asking us to be more patient…

It’s asking us to be more emboldened — and embodied.

With Love & Lived Wisdom,

Andrea Elaine

Every need that surfaces, whether it’s in our closest relationships or in the quiet of our interior worlds, is pointing at something.

A place where we desire more care.

A moment where we asked for presence and didn’t receive it.

A moment where our hurt needed to be acknowledged.

Or a relational wound that never fully closed.

Our needs are not accidental; they typically develop after years of experiencing what it feels like when those needs go unfulfilled.

Most of us, especially women, have been conditioned to tone down those needs into more acceptable forms. We slowly internalize what we need and slip into habits of being more “low maintenance” or “easeful.”

It becomes a metaphorical weight we carry about our identities.

Speaking up is sometimes received as an attack, and we are told that we must soften our delivery to make it easier for others to receive. In doing so, we move further from ourselves and further from honest expression.

But what matters here is how you navigate that, and whether you're seeking someone else to meet all of your needs without doing any of the work to also regulate from within.

This doesn’t mean showing up perfectly regulated every time. Shit happens. We are human and have all experienced a crash-out every now and then.

It means recognizing that while it's unreasonable to expect someone to meet every single one of your needs ALL the time, it's not unreasonable to have standards rooted in the work you've done and where you genuinely desire to be met with consistency, care, and consideration.

This is also where coregulation becomes a beautiful and necessary part of connection, where two people who have done their own work can help steady each other through the harder moments.

Creating more space and conversation around understanding where our needs come from is a first step, so I’ve begun asking myself these questions:

1. Are my needs rooted in urgency, trauma, scarcity, or lack?

2. Or are they rooted in love and a heart-centered desire?

These questions may seem simple, but by honestly exploring the root of my needs, I began to understand how to manage the intense reactions I experience when they feel unmet, which, for me, usually stems from a core relational wound of abandonment.

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What I’ve come to understand is that unmet needs don’t just create reactions; they reveal where we’ve stopped allowing ourselves to be fully received.

Where fear moved in and overshadowed a reasonable, inherent need.

Fear of asking for help.

Fear of being “too deep” or “too much.”

Fear of being truly vulnerable.

Fear of letting someone see the most tender parts of you…showing how deeply you are affected by something or someone.

Fear of being a burden.

Fear of expressing when you feel hurt and why.

Fear of not being enough as you are.

These fears don’t dissolve the core need; they just teach you to hide it. And a hidden need doesn’t disappear; it waits and accumulates.

Until eventually it stops asking quietly and starts demanding to be heard.

Something to remember, though: if you’ve experienced this, it is NOT who you are.

Speaking up when fear would have you stay silent is how you take back your power.

It hasn’t always looked graceful in my own life. There have been moments where I felt paralyzing fear and chose to take the emotional risk of expressing myself anyway. Things like:

"I desire a committed relationship.”

“I have no desire to [fill in the blank]…”

“I am unwilling to….”

“I love you” — and yes, I have definitely been the one to say it first sometimes, and no, it wasn’t always reciprocated.

“I miss you.”

“I feel deeply about this…”

“I want this.”

There have been times when I felt myself shutting down in real time because of the hurt I was feeling, even though being open & honest would have served me better.

When I’ve expressed myself from a place of raw anger, and it didn’t land well.

So I do my best to take as much time as I need to self-regulate first and then return to speak to what I was experiencing underneath the guarded exterior.

Both experiences are teaching me that when I express a need from a more regulated place, everything shifts completely. When I take the time to understand what I need and why, I usually find a way to give some of it to myself first.

Not as a substitute for connection. But as an act of building deeper self-trust.

As proof that the need is real and worth honoring.

Now, when I feel that urge to overprotect my heart, I speak up, even if I stumble (and I definitely have stumbled a lot…and still do). Even if it takes me some time to find the words, I choose to return to those moments and own my role — owning up to and speaking to how I am showing up.

Not because I have everything figured out. But because I deserve to experience joy, love, and care fully while I’m here…and so do you.

It’s okay to need & FEEL deeply. The word needy has been weaponized long enough and used to make people feel that wanting connection, consistency, and care is somehow a character defect.

It isn’t, and it never was.

With Love & Lived Wisdom,

Andrea Elaine

This season of my life is asking me to approach being seen in a new way, and long before I feel ready. It’s asking me to begin sharing some of my experiences as they unfold and to allow people to witness parts in the middle rather than always giving the polished ending. If I’m being honest, that doesn’t feel entirely safe.

Within this current leap, there’s fear rooted in conditioning and interwoven through past experiences. A fear that asks, What if I made a mistake? And when it comes to sharing those experiences, the creative endeavors, and the work I’ve been quietly building in solitude, an even scarier question creeps in:

“What if no one cares?”

This journey truly began in 2018, and I spent 7 years being transparent about my cancer journey. The struggles, fears, how it changed me, and how I am choosing to design a more fulfilling life, 7 years later, cancer-free.

In November 2025, I was discharged from my last specialist, an endocrinologist I was seeing because, after chemo, hormonal changes, and being on steroids for 2 years post bone-marrow transplant, my bone density dipped into the danger zone for someone my age. It took about 2 years to get back to normal levels after one infusion, multiple visits, and relentless focus on my health.

So being released from this clinic was like a weight had been lifted. My doctor hugged me and said, “You’ve been through so much, you deserve to let yourself live again.”

After the appointment, I got in the car and sat there in disbelief. It dawned on me that I had made it through the hardest 7 years of my life. Everything flashed before me, and for a moment, I wondered, “What am I supposed to do now?”

I decided I wanted to redefine my relationship with visibility outside of an identity rooted in recovery and acted on an urge that had been consistently nudging me — I booked a ticket to experience what life abroad could be like, and my first instinct was a 3-month trip to Lisbon. I didn’t have a true plan, other than knowing that’s where I was headed.

So, Why Lisbon?

My first time here was a 17-hour layover on my way back to the States from a two-week trip to Cabo Verde with my mom. We had just enough time to check into a hotel, have dinner, and sleep, but those 17 hours revealed something that my mind couldn’t quite conceptualize.

I felt the pull of an opportunity I’d been longing for. To fully immerse myself in culture, creativity, and my dream to see more of the world. To lean into the rhythms and let it expand the parts of me that felt constricted.

I wanted to switch myself off autopilot, but what no one prepares you for when it comes to leaping is what happens when you’re mid-air, especially in a new country.

I stayed at a gorgeous hotel for two days before moving into the apartment I secured, but after checking out, everything seemed to fall apart. The apartment was misrepresented in comparison to what was originally shown when I agreed to sublet. There was black mold EVERYWHERE — in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom — and since chemo affected my immune system, I am more sensitive to environmental triggers. All the health trauma responses I thought were gone for good came rushing back.

I started spiraling because it had been 48 hours, in a new country, with no family or established community yet, and for anything health-related, I thought to myself:

“I’m far away from all my specialists. How will I find a doctor?” “What if I get sick?” “Who’s going to help me navigate?” “What was I thinking coming here?”

I let myself crash out, pulled it together, and got to work because the only way out of this was to keep moving through it — I needed to tap into the determination & drive I have to get sh*t done.

I shifted into high gear and focused all my energy on finding a new home. I began posting in multiple housing groups, openly sharing my circumstances, explaining my needs, budget, and concerns. What started as “I may need to just call it and go home” became “I didn’t come this far just to come this far. ”

I was OUT of that moldy house by day 3, and into a last-minute Airbnb for the remainder of February, but by the time I felt somewhat “settled,” I realized I had spent the entire amount I budgeted for two months of housing in 3 days.

Within 24 hours of getting into that Airbnb, a woman reached out about my Facebook post to sublet her apartment in Príncipe Real for March/April. We scheduled a walkthrough, she showed me around the neighborhood, and after we spent time getting to know each other, she did the unthinkable…Instead of the €1500 she was asking for, with a mid-month move-in, she offered her home for the entire first month for €600, and dropped the second month to €1200.

She said, “I feel good about this. I was really nervous about subletting my home, but I saw your post within 10 minutes of mine, and something about you made it feel like this was right. Like the Universe was giving me a sign and I had to reach out.”

Tears welled up in my eyes because in that moment, I wasn’t just relieved, I was deeply grateful for her generosity. I went from feeling like I had made the biggest mistake coming here to being reminded that I’m protected in ways that I don’t always see.

Letting myself be seen in the chaos didn’t just solve a logistical problem. It brought the right people to me at the right time.

It was like receiving a lifeline. Like the city extending its hand, but the old familiar fears crept back in.

Can I trust this? Can I trust her?

This is the part that isn’t always immediately visible. The silent breakdowns (and the manyyyy crashouts) behind closed doors. The self-worth questions that surface when you’re alone in a foreign country, navigating everything at once.

Not only that, but there is a particular vulnerability in receiving help when you feel like you’re at a low point, and don’t yet have an inspiring lesson to package it in.

Thankfully, as the month progressed, I continued to receive an abundance of resources and people willing to extend kindness and love.

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So here are a few things I’m learning about leaping before you’re ready:

01. No amount of planning can fully prepare you for what’s coming. I’m learning you don’t have to abandon your plans, but you may have to loosen your grip on how they unfold.

02. The contrast is not always a sign that you made the wrong choice. Sometimes it’s the threshold you reach right before the miracle appears.

03. Letting people see you mid-struggle is not a weakness. It can be the bridge to the help you haven’t been able to receive by doing it all alone.

04. The body knows before the mind has a chance to catch up. The tension you feel is just data. Information you can use once you begin to cross that threshold.

05. You don’t always need to know how it ends to keep going.

What I do know is this: despite everything, I feel an aliveness here that I haven’t felt in a while, so maybe courage isn’t the leap.

Maybe it’s in allowing myself to be seen before I’ve actually landed. In the uncertainty. In mid-air. And maybe that’s enough.

With love & lived wisdom,

Andrea Elaine

A topic that continues to teach me about myself and others on this journey of personal growth is RELATIONSHIPS and the dynamics that exist within them.

What I am learning to accept [full acceptance is still a work in progress] is that two things can be true. Healthier relationships feel like you can finally breathe easy, AND they can trigger deep-rooted wounds, fears, and patterns.

I was once the person who felt responsible for fixing everything! I would go into overdrive whenever conflict arose; I instinctively took on its weight, feeling a self-imposed pressure to close the gap, smooth things over, and make sure everyone was okay. I would do my best to avoid rocking the boat by suppressing my emotions. Why? Because I was afraid of being received as “too much”.

When I began to release myself from being the fixer, the raw edge of healing began cutting through every relationship in my life, especially the one I had with myself.

Slowly, I came to understand that kindness isn’t about creating endless space for others’ comfort.

It’s about discernment:

knowing when to walk away, when to speak up, when to disengage, when to reengage, and when to surrender. Knowing this didn’t magically make it all better.

Prioritizing what I wanted my relationships to embody initially felt destabilizing (and if im being honest, often still does), and I still experience moments of uncertainty, which I now know is a form of not trusting myself.

The discomfort has been unnerving but necessary.

Over the last five years (and counting), I’ve spent most of my time unearthing the medical, energetic, and emotional trauma I experienced. I’ve worked with spiritual practitioners and leaned into somatic practices, regularly free-diving into emotional depths to rediscover parts of myself that had been buried or silenced.

I spent extended periods of solitude to learn to regulate my nervous system from the inside out, and in those quiet moments, I began to recognize that many of my fears were conditioned responses that reinforced a habit of shrinking.

That habit once offered the illusion of safety, even though a bigger part of me longed for a deeper kind of love and connection. One that reaches well beneath the surface and doesn’t require me to be less.

In 2018, my perspective radically shifted after getting diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that battling AML had become the catalyst for an upheaval in my life.

I realized that my emotional revival depended on expressing my needs and boundaries in relationships. Trusting that my intuition and body were picking up on signals that I shouldn’t ignore. Even if doing so ruffled a few feathers.

What isn’t talked about enough is that using your voice and stepping into your inner authority (while balancing openness and vulnerability) doesn’t immediately feel liberating.

Often, it feels uncomfortable, unsteady, and even a little disorienting.

My experiences continue to teach me that emotional regulation and boundary setting are not always a one-and-done process. It’s an ongoing dialogue with yourself. Sometimes it can take several uncomfortable conversations (with yourself and others) to move through those old fears as you begin to transcend them.

As I become more intentional about the types of relationships I desire, I’m also learning that anxiety and fear don’t simply disappear. I feel that healing is less about eliminating those feelings and more about learning to hold the duality.

What I continue to lean into is:

• I can be a confident person, AND still experience fear

• Confidence and a healthy sense of identity do not exempt anyone from moments of doubt, anxiety, stress, or even the occasional lapse in judgment.

• For those of us who were conditioned by hypervigilance or chaos, anxiousness can feel strangely familiar. Security, on the other hand, is a sense and needs nurturing over time. It develops slowly, often alongside the very triggers that have destabilized us.

I’ve come to see that there will be long stretches where I move through life with clarity and grounded action. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, something occurs that pushes against a boundary I thought I had already healed.

When that happens, I think that we get to make a new choice:

• To reflect and practice being gentler with ourselves as we meet those patterns again.

• To lean into learning how to close the loop by interrupting the pattern.

If it took years of conditioning to bring us here, imagine the patience and persistence required to unwind from it.

There will be moments when you ask yourself questions like:

Did I do the right thing? Should I have just let it slide? Am I asking for too much? Was that the right way to handle it? Could I have been more understanding? Could I have been more loving?

Although these questions can be useful, sometimes they reveal a subconscious wound, which can make it easier to dismiss or bypass the VALID emotions your body is attempting to communicate.

Your nervous system usually detects the pattern before you do, and chronic dysregulation occurs when you keep overriding what your body already knows.

Sometimes honoring your healing will require letting go of certain relationships, because not every connection is meant to last. Holding on can sometimes cause more harm than letting go.

And letting go doesn’t always mean something is gone forever. Maybe those relationships return to you, maybe they don’t. The bigger question is: “Is this growing in the direction I am going?”

Whatever the answer, try to trust how things are unfolding. I say this lovingly because I know that doing the hard thing is difficult for a reason. Offer yourself grace when and where you need it most.

You deserve relationships rooted in consideration, consistency, and CLARITY. Those same relationships may trigger you; do your best to let them.

With Love,

Andrea Elaine