What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
“I have built homes in people long enough, now it is time to build one for myself. I do not need much, just peace that has my name on the lease.” 🕯️
If you ask me what the biggest risk I have not taken yet is, it would not be love, career, or chasing a dream, it would be investing in a home of my own. Not a mansion. Not a fancy apartment. Just four walls and a roof I can finally call mine.
See, life has a funny way of keeping you in survival mode while whispering promises of stability you can almost touch. For years, I have been the one holding everyone else together, patching cracks that were not mine, pouring into cups that never seemed to refill, paying bills that were not always my responsibility, and showing up for people who forgot that I too had needs. Somewhere between being the strong one and the dependable one, I forgot to be the settled one.
Ever since my mom passed, it has felt like I have been walking on shifting ground. There has always been another crisis, another bill, another situation demanding “just one more” sacrifice. And because I have always had a giving heart, I kept saying yes. Yes to helping, yes to carrying, yes to being that safe place for everyone else, while my own dream of a safe place slowly slipped further away.
People can be cruel in quiet ways. They know your situation, they see your struggle, and still they pull from you. They take without thinking about how much it costs you, emotionally, mentally, even spiritually. They expect your light to stay on while they keep dimming yours with their demands. And through all of that, I have kept giving, because I was raised to love, to care, to hold space. But even love gets tired when it has nowhere to rest.
Owning a home.. My Own Home.. has now become more than a goal. It is a symbol of peace. It is a promise to myself that I will no longer just exist between helping others and healing myself. It is where I could finally breathe without worrying who might walk in, who might ask for something, or who might leave. I do not crave luxury.. I crave belonging. I crave a space where my mother’s memory can rest quietly on a shelf and not just in my chest.
I have learned that sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is risk everything for the one thing that will finally bring you peace. And for me, that is a home, not just walls, but healing in brick form.
If I am being honest, I would rather go to bed hungry in my own home than broke in someone else’s. Because hunger passes… but emptiness from never building something that is truly yours, that lingers.
Maybe one day, someone out there will understand that this is not about money, it is about meaning. It is about the kind of security that says, you have carried enough, it is now time to rest.
So yes, the biggest risk I have not taken yet is investing in a home of my own. But I am done putting that dream on hold. Because I have built lives, love, and legacies for others. Now it is time I build something for me. 🕯️
