In 1981 Actress Lily Tomlin portrayed a 1970/80s housewife in The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Her character, Pat, lives in the hyper-marketed suburb of Tasty Meadows with over saturation and where over consumption is king with diet drinks and harsh heavy household cleaners the focus. Pat shrinks because her body reacts adversely to an overlapping cocktail of everyday commercial items, from cleaning fluids to her husband’s experimental advertising perfume. She is like an inch tall in my memory of the film.
Pat embodies the 1950s/1960s “American Dream” housewife idea. Staying home in a station wagon while her husband works in advertising, which the film reveals as suffocating. She also was largely overlooked. Minimized, and pandered to. So, she shrunk. Literally.
“I’m tired of living in a world built for giants!”
Pat Kramer (Lily Tomlin)
As a metaphor, Pat’s physical shrinking mirrors how women in a patriarchal society are socially minimized, silenced, and expected to take up less space. Her journey in this movie tracks a gradual pushback against being treated as a domestic accessory or a “doll”, culminating in her reclaiming agency despite her size.
I was 15 in 1981. I loved this movie. Now, I see the entire film differently. I see it the way it was meant to be seen and “get” the message loud and clear.
There comes a moment when you realize you have been making yourself smaller
just to make other people comfortable.
You quiet your voice. You hide the parts of yourself that feel too different, too sensitive, too passionate, too magical. You question your dreams because someone else doesn’t understand them. You bend and adjust and compromise until you barely recognize the person looking back at you.
But you were never meant to live that way.
You were not placed on this earth to fit perfectly into someone else’s expectations of who you should be.
There is a kind of freedom that comes when you stop asking, “Will they understand me?” and begin asking, “Am I being true to myself?”
Not everyone will understand your path. Some people may only be comfortable with the version of you that asks for less, dreams smaller, or stays within the boundaries they have created for you. That doesn’t mean you need to change. Sometimes their discomfort is simply a reflection of what they are not ready to see.
Growth can be uncomfortable. Not only for us, but for the people watching us grow.
So let yourself take up space.
Let yourself be curious. Let yourself be passionate. Let yourself be a little strange, a little wild, a little witchy, a little whimsical. Follow the things that make your spirit feel alive.
You don’t have to become less bright so someone else doesn’t feel blinded by your light.
You don’t have to shrink who you are to make someone else comfortable with their own shadows.
Your life is yours to live. And perhaps the most beautiful form of self-love is realizing that you don’t have to abandon yourself just to be accepted by someone else.
Stay soft. Stay grounded. Stay true.
And let yourself become everything you were always meant to be. ✨🌙
Reflection:
Check in now with where you are at. Ask yourself where you may have been making yourself smaller for the comfort of others. What part of you has been waiting to be seen, heard, or welcomed?
You don’t have to change everything at once. Sometimes reclaiming yourself begins with one small permission:
We are often taught to think of home as somewhere we can point to on a map—a house, an address, four walls filled with familiar things.
But sometimes, home is not a place at all.
Sometimes, home is a feeling.
It is the exhale that comes when you finally feel safe enough to be fully yourself. It is the warmth that settles into your spirit when you are surrounded by people who see you, hear you, and love you without asking you to become someone else.
Home can be found in a person’s embrace, in the sound of someone laughing in the next room, or in the quiet companionship of a soul who understands you without needing an explanation.
And sometimes, home is found within ourselves.
There are seasons in life when the places we once called home no longer feel like they belong to us. People change. Relationships shift. Children grow. Houses are sold. Friendships end. Paths that once felt certain suddenly lead somewhere else.
It can be painful to realize that what once felt like home no longer does.
But perhaps there is something sacred in that realization.
Spiritually, we are always becoming. We are shedding old versions of ourselves, releasing what no longer aligns with our souls, and learning to trust the path unfolding beneath our feet. Sometimes the feeling of being “homeless” in our own lives is actually an invitation to come home to ourselves.
To listen inward.
To remember who we were before the world told us who we should be.
To create a home within our own hearts that cannot be taken away by another person’s absence.
Home might be the garden where your hands touch the earth and your spirit becomes quiet. It might be sitting beneath the moon, listening to the night, and feeling connected to something much larger than yourself. It might be music that reaches a place inside you that words cannot.
Home is where your spirit can breathe.
Home might be a familiar scent, an old song, a cup of tea held between your hands, or the peaceful feeling that comes when you finally stop running from yourself.
Not because they complete you, but because their presence reminds you that you were never incomplete.
The deepest kind of home does not demand that you shrink, perform, or pretend. It gives you room to grow. It allows you to change without making you feel guilty for becoming someone new.
Maybe that is why some places feel like home the moment we arrive, while others never do—even after years of being there.
Because the soul recognizes what the mind cannot always explain.
Home is where your spirit can breathe.
Where your heart can soften.
Where your truth does not have to whisper.
Where you can take off the masks you learned to wear and simply exist.
And perhaps the greatest spiritual lesson is this:
You are allowed to create home wherever your soul feels at peace.
You do not have to stay somewhere simply because it is familiar. You do not have to hold onto people simply because they once felt like home. And you do not have to fear beginning again when your spirit is calling you somewhere new.
Sometimes leaving is how we find ourselves.
Sometimes losing a home is how we discover that we were carrying one inside us all along.
So wherever life finds you—among familiar walls or somewhere completely unknown—listen closely to what your spirit is telling you.
Notice where you feel lighter.
Notice where you feel safe.
Notice where you can laugh freely, love deeply, and be unapologetically yourself.
Those places are sacred.
Those people are sacred.
And that feeling?
That is home.
Perhaps home was never meant to be a destination.
Perhaps home was always the moment when your soul whispered:
Your Path Was Never Meant to Look Like Anyone Else’s.
One of the greatest distractions on our journey is the temptation to compare our lives, gifts, and experiences to those of others. We see someone who seems more successful, more awakened, more talented, or further along their path, and we begin to question our own.
With the wrong set of eyes, there will always be someone out there doing exactly what you do – only better. We have to work on adjusting that vision.
The Earth tells us a different story.
No two trees grow in exactly the same way. No two flowers bloom on the same day. The moon itself moves through phases, never rushing from darkness to fullness. Nature understands what we often forget: everything unfolds in its own sacred timing.
When we compare ourselves to others, we disconnect from our own magic. We become so focused on another person’s path that we stop noticing the signs, synchronicities, and blessings appearing along our own. We forget that our soul came here to experience a unique journey, not a copy of someone else’s.
Someone once told be that if you envy or want what another has, you cant pick and chose. You have to take everything about their life. That everything may not be the thing you would wish for yourself.
The spiritual path is not a competition.
There is no prize for reaching enlightenment first. There is no award for having the most crystals, knowing the most rituals, or appearing the most “awakened.” True wisdom comes from honoring where you are right now and trusting the lessons that are finding you in this season.
Sometimes the Universe asks us to grow slowly. Sometimes we are in a season of rest, healing, or transformation beneath the surface. Like seeds sleeping in the dark earth, much of our most important growth happens where no one else can see it.
The next time you find yourself measuring your life against another’s, pause and remember: your ancestors, guides, and the Divine are not comparing you to anyone. They are simply asking you to become more fully yourself.
The moon does not compare herself to the stars. The river does not compare itself to the sea. Each carries its own wisdom, purpose, and power.
So honor your pace. Trust your path. Celebrate your growth, even when it feels small. The life you are creating is unfolding according to a sacred rhythm that belongs to you alone.
