Stop Abandoning Yourself

The 78-year-old woman sat beside me at a crowded restaurant table while eight mutual friends laughed loudly around us. Yet she seemed entirely alone.

Grief poured out of her eyes.

“How are you, Angela?” I asked.

She looked down at her hands before answering. Her eyes glistened.

“I haven’t played the harp in three years,” she said quietly. “I stopped writing too.”

I had known Angela for years as a buoyant musician and novelist, someone animated by curiosity and art. But that energy was gone now, as though some essential current inside her had been shut off.

“My partner’s illness consumed everything,” she continued. “At first, I thought I was just setting my work aside temporarily to care for her. But then the years passed. I abandoned music entirely. And somewhere along the way, I abandoned myself, too.”

Several years earlier, her partner had mocked her harp playing, referring to her practice sessions as “assaults on the ears.” Angela laughed softly as she repeated the phrase, but there was pain underneath it.

“I know she didn’t mean to destroy anything in me,” Angela said. “But after a while, I couldn’t separate her criticism from my worth.”

Her writing suffered similar wounds. After years of manuscript rejections from agents and publishers, she slowly stopped creating altogether.

“I told myself none of it mattered,” she said. “I would never become a real writer. Never become a professional musician. So why keep trying?”

What struck me was not simply her self-doubt, but the impossible bargain she had made with herself:

If my gifts do not earn recognition, then they have no value.
If I cannot become exceptional, then I should disappear entirely.

It is astonishing how many people quietly live by this equation.

Not because they are weak, but because somewhere along the way, they surrendered authority over their identity to the outside world.

Criticism. Rejection. Comparison. Indifference. Applause. Money.

Over time, other voices become louder than our own.

I asked Angela a question.

“If you loved woodworking or gardening, would you demand perfection from yourself before allowing yourself to enjoy it?”

She smiled faintly.

“No,” she admitted. “Probably not.”

“Then why do you demand it from your music or your writing?”

She stared out the restaurant window for a long moment but said nothing.

Years earlier, the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote about retreating inward to a place no humiliation, rejection, or public opinion could penetrate. Centuries later, the philosopher Pierre Hadot called this sanctuary the “Inner Citadel.”

Not a fantasy.
Not denial.
Not ego.

A place within ourselves where dignity remains intact.

Angela had not entirely lost access to that place. But she had stopped listening to it.

Before we left the restaurant that evening, I asked her to close her eyes.

“When you picture the part of yourself you abandoned,” I said softly, “what do you see?”

Her breathing slowed.

“I see a younger woman,” she whispered. “She’s sitting alone with her harp.”

“What would you say to her?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I would tell her I’m sorry.”

The next morning, we met at a small chocolate shop in Durango while heavy snow drifted down outside the windows.

We sat quietly for a while, warming our hands on large mugs of hot chocolate.

Then I asked her, “When you imagine that woman again — the one you abandoned — where do you feel her strength inside your body?”

Angela immediately lifted her hands in front of her.

“Here,” she said. “I feel it in my hands.”

She studied them as she spoke.

“These are the hands that learned to play the harp. These are the hands that spent thousands of hours writing stories. These hands created beautiful things before fear convinced me to stop.”

For the first time since our conversation began, there was firmness in her voice.

“Stay there for a moment,” I told her. “Don’t analyze it. Just feel it.”

She closed her eyes.

After several seconds, she spoke again.

“It’s strange,” she said. “There’s another voice there too.”

“What kind of voice?”

“Calm. Strong. Certain.”

“What does it say?”

Angela was silent for a while before answering.

“It says the cruel voice in my head has been lying to me for years.”

Outside, snow continued falling softly onto the street.

“I keep hearing something else, too,” she said. “Almost like an invitation.”

“To what?”

“To step outside the prison I built for myself.”

Psychologists have described this inner voice in different ways over the years. Carl Jung called the process of engaging it “active imagination.” Others have called it intuition, conscience, or the Self.

The label matters less than the experience itself.

Most people have encountered this voice at least once in their lives.

Quiet. Clear. Unafraid.

It appears in moments when we stop performing long enough to hear ourselves honestly.

The problem is not that self-doubt exists. It always will.

The problem is obedience.

Several months later, I met Angela again at the same chocolate shop.

She looked different.

Lighter somehow.

Alive.

Before I could ask anything, she smiled and said, “I’m writing again.”

“And the harp?”

“I’m playing every day.”

“What changed?”

Angela leaned back in her chair and laughed softly.

“I remembered something my gymnastics coach told me when I was sixteen.”

She paused.

“After a terrible competition, I told him I was thinking about quitting. He looked at me and said, ‘The finest athletes are not free from doubt. They just refuse to obey it.’”

She smiled again.

“For years, I thought courage meant becoming fearless. But now I think it means something else.”

“What’s that?”

“It means refusing to abandon yourself.”

Outside the window, snowflakes drifted slowly through the gray Colorado sky while people hurried down the sidewalk beneath scarves and umbrellas.

Angela wrapped both hands around her mug of hot chocolate.

“I still hear the old voices sometimes,” she admitted. “The ones that tell me I’m too old, untalented, insignificant. But they no longer get the final word.”

I nodded.

The Inner Citadel is not a place we visit once and remain forever protected.

We return to it continually.

Each time we create rather than hide.
Each time we speak honestly rather than perform.
Each time we refuse to measure our worth by applause, money, status, or the permission of others.

And perhaps most importantly:

Each time we choose not to forsake ourselves again.

Never abandon yourself again…

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