At the start of this year, fresh in a new city and on the brink of turning 45, I pulled a tarot card for guidance.
The message was simple: Let your love roar like a lion.
I rolled my eyes.
Love, to me, has always been soft. A warm blanket draped over the shoulders. A held gaze. A whisper in the dark. Not a roar. Not claws. Not something with teeth. Sure, there’s mama bear energy, but that’s the exception, not the baseline.
The card didn’t land. So I reshuffled and pulled again.
Same card.
Apparently, there was something I needed to hear.
So I sat with it. And the longer I did, the more it started to hum through my bones with a truth I hadn’t yet named.
I’ve spent much of my life accommodating. Reading the room before I’ve read myself. Silencing my own discomfort to preserve someone else’s ease. Swallowing the awkward question so the other person doesn’t feel put on the spot. Softening the edge. Calling it compassion.
If I’m honest, that didn’t come from love.
It came from fear.
Fear of what might happen if I said the thing, asked for what I needed, drew a line.
I’ve had leaky boundaries in the name of being kind, when really, I was abandoning myself in the name of not being abandoned by someone else.
But love, real love, doesn’t shrink.
It doesn’t tiptoe.
That lion-roar card wasn’t calling me to aggression. It was calling me to fierce honesty around my own wants and needs. To let my voice speak without pre-managing someone else’s reaction. To stop swallowing discomfort and calling it maturity.
This year, that stops.
And that shift is already showing up in very tangible ways.
Let me give you a simple example, wrapped up in the package of my new home.
Ever since I’ve had a place big enough for guests, I’ve organized my home around other people’s comfort. Where will they sleep? Will they have privacy? Will it be peaceful and cozy?
I told myself it was because I’m a good host. Because I come from a big family where making room for everyone is what we do.
While that might be true, it’s also incomplete.
Because what I hadn’t questioned was this: None of that was built on boundaries.
It was built on the assumption that my sanctuary should always be available for someone else’s use.
That of course my office would double as a guest room. Of course I’d move my life around every time someone visited. Of course their comfort came first.
And then, in this new house, a radical thought crossed my mind: What if this house was just for us? For my husband, our dogs, and me? What if we didn’t have an open door policy? What if no one stayed over…ever?
The thought felt selfish. Wrong.
Which is strange, because I’ve never expected someone else’s home to be for me.
But when you’ve trained yourself to prioritize others’ comfort over your own, there’s no line. Not even in your own space.
That lion card didn’t ask me to roar at others.
It asked me to roar for myself.
To mark my sacred territory.
To stop designing a life I’m only partially inhabiting.
To stop inviting people into every sacred room without asking if I even want to share it.
Your home is an energetic extension of you. And if your home has leaky boundaries, chances are, you do too.
So for the first time in my life, we’re designing our home entirely around us. How we move. How we rest. How we live. No more built-in hospitality at the expense of energetic alignment.
Will people still visit? Of course.
Will they still stay with us…I’m not sure.
I’m giving myself permission to question that default assumption.
Because this year, love isn’t passive.
It isn’t a whisper.
Love has a roar.
And for me, that roar sounds like this: This is my home. This is my boundary. This is what I need.
So if you’ve been shrinking your spaces, silencing your preferences, or abandoning yourself in the name of being nice, let this be your invitation.
Let love be bold.
Let boundaries be sacred.
Let your home, and your life, be built around you.
You’re not selfish.
You’re just finally listening to your own roar.
