When Downsizing Feels Like Losing Yourself
- May 5
- 2 min read
There's a version of "moving on" that nobody talks about. The one where you're not falling apart dramatically. You're just quietly packing boxes, staring at a lease renewal you can't sign, and trying to figure out how to honor a life you built while also letting it go.
That's where I'm at.
In Episode 4 of Purpose Not Pity, I get honest about one of the hardest intersections grief can put you in: the moment when financial survival and emotional survival are asking you to do two completely different things. I received a lease renewal offer that would keep my rent exactly the same. And instead of relief, I felt my chest tighten.
Because it's not just an apartment. It's the first place I ever chose for myself. Not for my kids. Not out of necessity. For Erika.
I talks about the $825 monthly car payment that exists because in 2023, I took out a loan against my car to keep my family fed rather than ask for help. A survival decision I made with love that I'm still paying for today. And how that one line item is the reason I have to walk away from a home I never had to settle for.
This episode also carries something heavier underneath it. In one week, my son Jovan would have turned 21. And I recorded this knowing he's watching. Choosing to keep moving forward not because I have it figured out, but because I owes it to his memory to not give up on my own life.
What comes out of this conversation is something that will sit with you. The idea that we've been taught growth only moves upward. Bigger, better, more. But maybe the real move sometimes is making your life smaller so you can finally build it on solid ground.
I call it, simplifying the battlefield so you can win the war.
This episode is for anyone who has ever had to make a decision that looked like a step back but was actually an act of survival. For anyone sitting in the messy middle of rebuilding and wondering if they're doing it wrong. For anyone who has ever confused their square footage with their worth.
You are not your rent. You are not your car payment. You are the one who survived the fire.
In this episode:
Why a lease renewal email made me cry instead of celebrate
The survival debt that still follows me years later
Grief, identity, and what it means to choose yourself for the first time
Why downsizing isn't shrinking, it's strategy
Giving yourself permission to be a hot mess while you're under construction
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