2020 is asking more of me than I ever expected.

The world feels unfamiliar. The pandemic has brought uncertainty into nearly every part of life, and the pain of racial injustice feels especially heavy. Work, family, faith, relationships, safety, and the future all seem to be shifting at once.

Life is different from anything I have known, and I am struggling to accept how little control I have over so much of it.

I am accustomed to being the person who figures things out, takes care of what needs to be done, supports the people around me, and keeps moving. But in this season, there is nowhere to hide from the questions I have avoided asking myself.

Am I happy?

Do I feel alive?

Does the life I am living still reflect who I am—or am I remaining in familiar spaces because change frightens me?

Some parts of my life no longer feel right, but leaving what is familiar is scary. Familiarity can resemble security even when it no longer feels like peace. Time invested can begin to feel like a reason to keep investing, even when something is slowly draining us.

I am beginning to ask myself:

How long should the time I have already invested determine how much more of myself I am willing to lose?

Even my understanding of life and faith is being stretched. I am confronting questions that do not fit neatly inside everything I have always believed or understood. I am learning that growth sometimes requires us to examine which beliefs are rooted in love and which ones are being held in place by fear, habit, judgment, or the need to feel certain.

In the middle of all this disruption, one lesson keeps rising to the surface:

I have to learn to love myself unapologetically.

Self-love sounds simple when it is printed on a shirt, written beneath a photograph, or repeated as an affirmation. Living it is different.

Loving yourself may require you to tell the truth about what no longer fits. It may mean admitting that something you prayed for, worked for, remained loyal to, or invested years in is no longer helping you become the person you are meant to be.

Sometimes loving yourself means physically leaving. Other times, it means creating a boundary, changing someone’s access to you, releasing an expectation, developing a new plan, or finally admitting to yourself that you are unhappy.

It means learning that choosing yourself is not automatically selfish.

I can love others and still need room to breathe. I can appreciate an opportunity and still acknowledge that it may no longer be where I belong. I can support the people around me and still need space to process my own pain. I can have faith and still ask difficult questions. I can care deeply for other people without abandoning myself to make them comfortable.

Many of us have been taught to measure our goodness by how much we can carry, how long we can endure, and how often we place ourselves last. We call it loyalty, strength, sacrifice, faithfulness, or responsibility.

But if constantly proving my love for everyone else requires me to disappear from my own life, that is not the kind of love I want to continue practicing.

The Creativ3 Curv3 theory reminds me that a curve can disrupt everything familiar without ending the story. Sometimes a curve exposes what is no longer working and challenges us to create a new way forward.

Maintaining my best Curv3—my smile—does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means protecting the part of me that still believes joy, peace, purpose, and possibility belong in my life. It means refusing to perform happiness while quietly becoming less alive.

I do not have every answer today. I am still afraid of some of the changes I may need to make. But I am beginning to understand that self-love is not always a feeling.

Sometimes it is a decision.

A decision to listen to yourself.

A decision to honor what you know.

A decision to stop shrinking.

A decision to believe that your needs matter too.

Love yourself enough to leave anything that makes you feel less alive. Never value the presence of others in your life more than your own presence within it.

You deserve to recognize yourself in the life you are living. You deserve to move through life’s curves without losing yourself—or your smile—along the way.