“You’re not ready for the love you desire, yet.” The small voice of God whispered to me in the dark room as I retched violently into the toilet for what seemed like the 50th time that early morning.
It had been a very emotional day. What was supposed to be a fun getaway weekend with my sister had come to a very miserable end.
For one, I’d spent most of the afternoon in a very down and contemplative mode. And by down, I meant raging at God because I was ready for the husband He promised me and was tired of waiting. Years before He’d told me it would happen within a year. At the time, I couldn’t imagine meeting the man, falling in love and getting married within a year, and so I rejected His words.
Fast-forward to the year I sat slumped on the bathroom floor barfing my guts out. I finally had the faith to buy into God’s words. Three months in, and things felt like they were moving slower than a snail. Everything seemed so far from what He told me. First of all, I wasn’t dating anyone. “I needed the man if God’s words about the timeline were gonna be true.”
That afternoon found me sitting on a beach chair and demanding that God do something before the end of the month. Otherwise, I’d stop believing His promise. I didn’t want to believe what He’d told me any longer. Believing and hoping were too hard.
He said not a word. He remained absolutely silent until early the next morning as my throat burned with acid and tears streamed from my eyes. My knees sank into the damp tiles as I leaned against the cold white porcelain I’d just emptied my soul into.
As the pungent scent of sour stomach acid filled the small hotel bathroom, He continued, “You’ve rejected every eligible guy who came your way because you’re scared to love again. You have residual trauma from your last relationship that makes you scared and unable to choose any guy. In fact, you’ve turned your list into a weapon.”
My shaking hands braced against the cold porcelain as I prepared to heave again. That’s when a series of scenes started playing in my head.
I saw the guy who I used to hire to take me to work each day. He’d ask me out consistently, but I always turned him down. In fact, the last time we had spoken, he’d told me that if I had given him the time of day, we’d probably be married by now. He eventually gave up and went on to date and marry someone else.
I saw the German guy I’d met at the airport on my last trip, after God arranged it so I overnighted in the airport for the first time in my life. We met as he came off a delayed early morning flight. We smiled and chatted briefly before he left to find his gate. Much to my surprise, he came back to find me, and we spent the early morning laughing and chatting until he left to catch his flight.
I saw the guy I was currently heartsick about. I was quick to warn him off the minute I felt the spark between us and thought he might want more. At the time, I was proud of myself for being responsible and being clear about my boundaries. Now, I dealt with the hurt and pain of him finally believing me and pulling away.
As I sat on that cold floor, I stared one truth in the face. That day, months ago, when I warned him off, I lied to both of us. I was just afraid of getting hurt again, so it was better to put up walls instead of taking a chance. With the truth staring me straight in the face that morning as I lacked the strength to even pull myself up off the bathroom floor, I felt a deep sense of hopelessness.
I thought I was doing better. I had spent so much time in therapy. I was finally communicating better. How could I have missed something so critical?
You know that moment, don’t you? The one where you felt like you’re back at square one – the very place you’ve worked your ass off to avoid?
I thought I was done lying to myself and others. I thought I was done with self-sacrificial reaction. But the evidence stacked up before me, I had just been fooling myself. Nothing has changed. I was still reacting out of fear.
My heart ached, and I began to cry bitterly as my mind settled on the guy I’d warned off. I saw my past actions through fresh eyes. I cannot believe I had confused us both when I thought I was operating from a place of clarity. When I thought I was being brave and honest.
Misstepping and feeling like you’re back at square one…
Without the proper tools, you never walk away from those moments unscathed. When you’re a recovering people-pleaser, those moments are perfect nesting places for your inner critic to make its displeasure known. It doesn’t matter how much progress you made in the past, or how much you’ve shut it up before; it now heralds your failure and agitates your internal spiral: “You’re never going to get it right. Why bother trying?”
In moments like this, it can feel like you’re between a rock and a hard place. The venomous inner critic is at your back, and at your front is the fear that comes with the stark awareness that your application sucks and you can’t see your blind spots.
It’s in moments like this that you’re tempted to give up, because “what’s the point? It’s obvious you don’t know what to do.” The confidence of the high-achieving perfectionist and control freak in you took a hit. All you can see are the times you tried in real-life and thought you’d won, only to realise you’d failed. Maybe it feels like you haven’t won yet despite all the tries you’ve made. Maybe this is your first try at applying what you know since you started your healing journey, and things didn’t go as planned. You are left stunned by the realisation that all that learning and information consumption didn’t prepare you to apply in the real world. Now, the perfectionist in you is afraid to try again if you can’t guarantee you’ll get it right and avoid looking like a fool.
My pink flamingo friend, don’t yield to your inner critic. Don’t let that perfectionist run your show.
That morning, as I threw up what felt like my entire soul in that bathroom, I only saw the rock-and-hard-place options that I saw. Then I remembered the One who loved me enough to show me my true location when I had the audacity to question Him. I turned to God instead with an urgent, heartfelt plea, “What should I do?”
Days later, I got triggered really badly, and because I was open and honest about my location, the hurt I had held on to for years flowed to the surface. This time, without prompting from the Lord, I finally admitted to the sorrow, fear and disappointment my heart held on to. I finally admitted that I dreaded choosing wrong again and experiencing the hurt I went through. I could not bear it. I finally admitted that that’s why I’ve been running away and closing my eyes to what’s there in each interaction, or finding reasons why it’s wrong.
With that level of honesty with myself and God, the Lord started flooding me with resources about grief and the fear of “opening your heart to love again”. And then He led me to Joshua 3:9-17 and told me to camp out there.
So Joshua told the Israelites:
“Come and listen to what the Lord your God says. Today, you will know that the living God is among you. He will surely drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites ahead of you.
Look, the Ark of the Covenant, which belongs to the Lord of the whole earth, will lead you across the Jordan River! Now choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. The priests will carry the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. As soon as their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the river will stand up like a wall.”
So the people left their camp to cross the Jordan, and the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of them. It was the harvest season, and the Jordan was overflowing its banks. But as soon as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river’s edge, the water above that point began backing up a great distance away at a town called Adam, which is near Zarethan. And the water below that point flowed on to the Dead Sea until the riverbed was dry. Then all the people crossed over near the town of Jericho.
Meanwhile, the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant stood on dry ground in the middle of the riverbed as the people passed by. They waited there until the whole nation of Israel had crossed the Jordan on dry ground.”
It was time for me to stop self-sabotaging and using my preparation season as an excuse to ward off men. Through Joshua 3, the Lord spoke to my situation and the fears I had about messing up and returning to square one. He showed me that it was time to step into the roaring river that had flooded its banks and stand there.
I would not experience the love I desire by standing from a distance on the riverbank. I would not experience the husband he had for me by hopping into the river only to hop out again because things felt unsafe. I had to trust Him – the One who led me to the river and told me to step in. And though things felt scary, I must step in and stand there.
My pink flamingo friend, with that instruction from the Lord, I stepped in and stood in that river. Even when I misstepped again and again. I cried and felt scared many times. I remained in that river because that’s where God said I needed to be.
And over time, something happened. My heart opened in ways I didn’t realise it was closed. Relationships closed off, and my submission to the Lord and His will for me around my future marriage deepened. Then one September afternoon, He whispered, this is your last month single. By October, I was being courted, and four months later, I tied the knot with my husband, Jeremy.
Remarkably, one core thing Jeremy expressed gratitude for as we were courting was my clear communication – I did not play games or leave him guessing and confused. That was the skill I mastered by clumsily interacting with all those guys, and by going through the process of learning my blind spots and doing the hard work.
What to do when you’re feeling like you’re back at square one…
My pink flamingo friend, I shared this story to encourage you. But I don’t want to end here, leaving you empty-handed as you navigate these moments and this season of your life. Today, I’m also your adopted auntie who shares a few practical strategies and tools I learned from that season and others. These are things I wish someone had told me when I felt discouraged because it seemed like I was back at square one.
#1: Give yourself grace in the learning journey
My pink flamingo friend, mastering the skill of responding to others is not learned in one go, unless you are a brainiac who is gifted at that skill. You spent years people-pleasing, stifling your voice and reacting in ways that don’t align with your God-aligned pink flaming self. You spent the majority of your life mastering this reactive skill. It doesn’t matter if your reactivity when you get triggered looks like cursing people out, running away or shutting down. You earned your PhD in it. You mastered that skill.
That mastery isn’t wiped out in a day. Mastering the skill of responding instead of reacting is not learned in a day, either. When it comes to the space you’re in, approach it like an apprentice mastering a new skill or a baby learning to walk. The baby has to creep, then the baby learns to stand. The baby will fall every now and again as it shakily takes a step forward. And though that baby falls and may even cry, he gets up again and steps forward until he matures into a steady walker.
My pink flamingo, be that determined baby. Keep getting your reps in. Keep taking steps. Sometimes you won’t get it right, and you’ll find yourself reacting the old way, but be the baby who gets back up again. Be like the righteous man in Proverbs 24:17 who trips seven times but gets back up. Let me tell you something, today I look back at some of my falls and feel thankful that I got back up again. Those risings helped me get to the place where I do something that my husband appreciates deeply about me – my ability to communicate honestly and gracefully with myself and others.
I’m grateful that my desire to move forward is stronger than the embarrassment of the fall. Don’t let your embarrassment win. Rise into who you truly are. Give yourself grace in the learning journey.
#2: Focus on one to three learning journeys at a time
My pink flamingo friend, don’t let your inner recovering high-achieving perfectionist and control freak self-sabotage your progress. I know you want to get everything right and do everything right because you’re afraid to do something wrong. It’s tempting to see all these areas that need improvement and to want to try to improve them all at once.
Unless you’re like one of those multi-armed robots, you do not have the energy or focus to spring clean everything all at once. You cannot gut every room, repaint every wall and upgrade every habit at once.
Trying to do it all is a recipe for disappointment and exhaustion. When you try to master every trigger, every pattern, every relational dynamic at once, you guarantee discouragement. When things start falling through the cracks, as they tend to do, as you strain your capacity, you’re bound to start feeling like you’re failing at too many things.
Instead, allow the Lord to guide you on which areas to focus on mastering. And get intentional and disciplined about focusing on that area. That’s how you build consistency and expand your wins (pom-poms) list. That’s how you taste progress, and that’s what builds confidence.
#3: Know the difference between seeing the same thing and being in the same place.
My pink flamingo friend, you’ll find yourself feeling defeated and thinking you’re back at square one if you, like many recovering people-pleasers, get tripped up by the belief that healing is linear.
When you’ve spent the majority of your life walking a particular way, there are fruits upon fruits upon fruits of that behaviour. While God is quite capable of uprooting that plant and its fruits in one go, sometimes He allows us to walk the path that requires us to deal with the fruits and seeds of that plant in cycles.
In those situations, healing becomes more like a spiral staircase. You master the level and then come upon new patterns and beliefs that fall under the umbrella of the same root issue that you know. For example: years later, even after significant work, I’m still finding new areas where I’ve been stifling my voice as I try to manage other people’s feelings and in fear of how they will react to me. I find these patterns in my marriage, and I uncover them in other areas of life, like in business, with friends, etc. And when I find them, I rarely despair. I tell them hello, thank the Lord for revealing them to me and then ask for His guidance in handling them.
So, you see, each time you discover a new pattern, it’s because you conquered the old level and went a bit higher. The view is different. The awareness is deeper. The fruit you see now was invisible before because you were not ready to see it, or didn’t have the tools to deal with it.
My pink flamingo friend, you’re not back at square one. You’re dealing with different patterns of the same root but you’ve matured and that’s progress. Celebrate that shit! Now that brings me to my 4th strategy.
#4: Manage your perception of reality
My pink flamingo, you are not failing; you are stretching and making progress. Do not let thoughts of discouragement and an inaccurate perception of the situation cause you to give up or underestimate the progress you’ve made.
This is where it’s vital to deal with the inner conflicts you experience in your mind. Tune your interpretation and work to align it with God’s perspective of what’s actually happening right now.
Your behaviours are driven by your feelings, and your feelings are driven by your thoughts. And many times, when you feel like you’re back at square one, you’re believing a lie that leads to a reaction. Don’t let it be a case where you levelled up in God’s eyes, but you reacted to your imperfect location because of perfectionism’s warped standards of excellence. Don’t let this moment be one that God calls excellence, but you feel discouraged because you’re not at the level you think you should be automatically or in a short time frame.
My pink flamingo friend, it is dangerous to look at this moment through the eyes of the high-achieving recovering people-pleaser who lived life by everyone’s standard of success. I would not be sitting here writing to you like this if I had allowed my feelings and thoughts to win all those years ago. I don’t believe my husband and I would be married today if I had pushed forward instead of gaining God’s perspective on what was truly going on with me.
My pink flamingo friend, do not call bad what God has called good. Your people-pleasing inner critic will put you and your future out of operation if you don’t get a handle on your perception of your reality.
#5: Slow down and test the emotions and thoughts that are in your driver’s seat in those moments
My pink flamingo friend, I cannot stress this enough. The moments where you should least trust yourself and your defaults are the ones where you’re unlearning your old grey flamingo ways of being. I can tell you from experience (let the story I shared above stand in the witness stand), those are the moments when I felt like I was making the right moves when I wasn’t.
Those are the moments when I needed some sort of system to truly get honest with myself and God about where I was truly at. That’s why the Conflict Navigation Guide is the core textbook of the Pink Flamingo University. You need a way to slow down and test the emotions and thoughts in your driver’s seat in those moments.
Fear isn’t always loud when you’ve walked the people-pleasers path for decades. Many times, it has shifted into the subconscious level that you won’t even notice unless you intentionally go looking for it. And that subtle fear will have you saying and doing things that look logical and honest when they are grey flamingo behaviours. Fear will have you thinking you’re doing something that is self- and neighbour-honouring when it’s rooted in selfishness.
So, my pink flamingo, test the motive behind the act and let God direct your path, as He promises in Proverbs 3:6.
My pink flamingo friend, let me end with this.
You’re not back at square one. It’s time you stop demanding graduate-level performance from yourself in areas where you’re still in kindergarten, as you navigate the messy middle of rewiring your way of being.
1. Give yourself grace as you learn.
2. Focus on one to three learning journeys at a time
3. Know the difference between seeing the same thing and being in the same place.
4. Manage your perception of reality
5. Slow down and test the emotions and thoughts that are in your driver’s seat in those moments
With pink flamingo love,
Chañel
P.S. Here are some tools and strategies to foster self-trust as a recovering people-pleaser
Enjoy reading? Read my first book, “In Search of the Pink Flamingo – Ditch the Expectations of Others, Own Your Voice, and Be Your Unusual Self
Prefer listening? Listen to this 5-minute episode “Birds bird. Chañel Chañel” on the Pink Flamingo Podcast. This episode hits if you have ever held back who you are because you’re scared no one will like the real you.
Want to support our work? Our mission is to help Caribbean families and communities heal from the psychological wounds of slavery and people-pleasing patterns passed down through generations. Want to be a part of that healing? Share this post with a Caribbean friend. OR Sow a seed here.
Are you an organisation leader who desires to reduce team burnout, quiet-quitting or resignations by equipping your team or leaders to serve without depleting themselves? Shoot me an email at [email protected] to find out more about booking me for trainings or workshops.