Today’s Affirmation: I Deserve Peace That Doesn’t Ask Me to Shrink

There comes a moment in life when survival mode stops being enough. When you start to notice that the way you've been "holding it together" is actually holding you back. And if you’re anything like many of the women I work with—especially first-generation, bicultural, caretaking women of color—you’ve been told in a thousand small ways that your peace should be earned, not expected.

Pero mira, let me be clear: you deserve peace that doesn’t ask you to shrink.

Not the kind of peace that comes from people-pleasing. Not the kind that requires you to swallow your voice, minimize your pain, or stay quiet to keep the peace.

I’m talking about real peace. The kind that feels like exhaling after holding your breath for years. The kind that feels rooted, unapologetic, and honest. The kind that doesn’t require you to contort yourself into something more palatable for others.

Sometimes, clients come to me after years of performing. Smiling through resentment. Carrying invisible burdens. Wanting to rest but not knowing how. They're proud of their strength, but they’re also tired of being strong all the time. And what often gets revealed in our work is this: somewhere along the way, they were taught that they had to earn their peace by sacrificing their needs. That peace was only available after the to-do list, after the caretaking, after the approval.

That’s a lie.

Peace isn’t a reward. Peace is a right.

La verdad es que healing begins when we stop negotiating with our own worthiness. When we stop waiting for someone to give us permission to feel whole, safe, rested. When we say, "I don’t need to become smaller to be loved. I don’t need to disappear to be accepted."

This affirmation isn’t just a cute quote.

It’s a reclamation.

It’s a reminder to return to yourself. To create boundaries that protect your energy. To rest without guilt. To honor the version of you that existed before the world asked you to be smaller.

Let me share about a former client—we’ll call her Marisol. She came into our first session exhausted, but still trying to smile through it. She had a demanding job, aging parents who relied on her, and siblings who had learned to depend on her emotional labor. She didn’t complain. She didn’t even realize how depleted she was until I asked her a simple question: When was the last time you felt at peace?

Her answer was silence.

In that silence, there was grief—for the girl who used to dream, for the

woman who had learned to disappear in order to be loved. And what followed in our sessions was a gradual, powerful shift. We didn’t aim for perfection or some unreachable vision of "balance." We worked on permission. Permission to say no. Permission to rest. Permission to not answer the phone. Permission to prioritize her body, her emotions, her voice.

That’s what real peace looks like. Not perfect calm, but the ability to exist without chronic self-abandonment.

This is what we focus on in therapeutic coaching, especially during intensives. It’s not surface-level work. It’s deep, embodied, ancestral work. It's about learning how to stop shrinking, stop apologizing, and start taking up space in your own life.

This work matters because so many of us carry generational expectations to serve, to endure, to never make waves. We inherit silence. We inherit sacrifice. And then we wonder why joy feels foreign or why resting makes us feel guilty. But you weren’t meant to inherit only pain. You were meant to inherit healing, too.

You don’t have to apologize for wanting peace that doesn’t come at your own expense. You don’t have to explain why you're tired. You don’t have to justify your right to rest. Your value is not in your productivity, your usefulness, or your ability to endure discomfort without complaint.

Today’s Affirmation: 

I deserve peace that doesn’t ask me to shrink.

You are allowed to breathe deeply.

To say "no más."

To claim your space.

To take up room in your own story.

And if you're ready to explore what that looks like in real life—visit Corazon Wellness, and let’s talk about how a therapeutic coaching intensive can support your return to self.