How Breaking My Grandmother’s Heart Saved My Life — And, why I would do it again. (Sorry, Grandma.)

I know. Harsh, right? My poor Grandmother. I adored her, and she loved me like no one else did. The last thing I would ever do is hurt her… Except this one time when my life literally depended on it. I knew it did — it could feel it in my bones.

My grandmother was such a special lady, and by that I mean a feisty, little, German, Sagittarius firecracker. She was amazing. But, her world was very small. She spent most of her years on the family farm, raising her daughters and running a small business. When I was a little girl, my mother and her sister worked for grandmother. It was an unspoken expectation that being the oldest grandchild meant I would take over one day and continue their legacy.

When I was eighteen years old, grandma added me to the payroll officially. When I enrolled in college classes she couldn’t understand why I would “waste my time” on a college education. She had my future all figured out for me, and I certainly didn’t need a degree to learn everything she knew about running an Adult Foster Care Home.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her then, but I knew that I didn’t want to take over the business. I knew it would break her heart, that she would take the decision personally, that it might damage my relationship with her.

I also knew that taking over the business was a trap. It would mean never being able to leave my hometown in rural Michigan. Leaving my hometown in rural Michigan was my only real goal in life, and I wasn’t going to do anything to mess it up. (Not even for my grandma, may she rest in peace.)

My mother had another sister. A college educated sister who never worked for the family business, and had moved all the way to California. Even as a little girl, I was so fascinated with her. She went places I only saw on TV, and did things I could only imagine. I wanted that. The freedom and excitement of experiencing far away places called to me. The security I saw in her life was unlike anything I knew, and I wanted that too, maybe more than anything.

After a couple semesters of school, I applied for a job at the local hospital to work as a ward clerk. When I told my Grandmother that they offered me a full time position (that worked with my school schedule), with full benefits (which we did not have) and paid double what she paid me (!) she was not happy for me.

She was heartbroken.

After a couple years at the local hospital, a wedding and a couple babies, I got my wish. My husband (at the time) and I packed up a U-Haul truck full of our hand-me-down furniture and drove thirteen hours away from everything I’d ever known.

Again, grandmother was heartbroken.

When my little sister graduated from college, I bought her a ticket to fly down and see me. My mother was furious. “What if her plane crashes? How could you ever forgive yourself?”

“She’s more likely to get in a car crash going to your house, mom. It’ll be fine.”

Mother hated my morbid jokes, and she hated the idea of her little girls leaving the safety of the county we were born in. My mother had never been on an airplane, and to my knowledge, neither had my grandmother. They rarely traveled more than a few miles from home.

I thought my mother would have a stroke when I took her grandchildren to the ocean. It was my first time to stand in the surf with the salty breeze on my face and the bright, beautiful sun overhead. I was twenty-three years old when I saw the ocean the first time, my children were babies. My mother never learned to swim, and never went to see the ocean.

When I traveled to India, mother said goodbye like I wasn’t coming back. She could not imagine any good reason for me to do such a dangerous thing. I couldn’t imagine living my whole life never having stood inside the Taj Mahal, or watched the coral reefs go by through the floor of a glass bottom boat in the Caribbean Sea, or sipped Margaritas under a thatched umbrella on a beach in Mexico.

Leaving my hometown was probably the most important decision I’ve ever made. It changed me, and changed my life in every way possible. After a couple of years in Atlanta, we moved on to Austin, Texas where we lived for a decade before moving to Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is where I really found my way, and changed everything about my life all over again.

I didn’t just leave my family behind in Michigan. I left some toxic influences that might have really damaged me if I had stayed. I left behind cycles of abuse, addiction, poverty and pain. I left behind the expectations of one of the greatest women I’ve ever known, and chose instead to follow my heart. A choice I have spent precisely zero minutes regretting since.

I have the most amazing life. It hasn’t always been easy, and things are never perfect, but sometimes I feel so happy I could just explode. I’m certain this is a feeling that wouldn’t have been possible for me if I was still living someone else’s life.

Authenticity, I have found, is the key to all happiness.

Could I have ignored my intuition and stayed where I didn’t belong to live a life not meant for me to please my precious grandmother, whose heart was in the right place, and totally believed she was giving me a beautiful gift by saddling me with a business I didn’t want to be chained to?

I surely could have done the job. Part of me probably would have felt proud to carry the family torch. My grandmother built that place with her own hands. She devoted her whole life to caring for others — it was her passion and purpose. Hers. Not mine.

Is carrying on the family legacy such a bad thing? It depends entirely upon how it fits with who we really are, and what we really want. I knew I wanted more that the family business could afford me. I knew that I needed to see new places and faces — the small town walls were starting to close in on me and I felt like I was suffocating there. I knew that choosing to make my grandmother happy would result in spending the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I had the courage to go find myself in the great big world out there.

There are few things in life of which we can be certain, but I can say with complete confidence that I would not be the woman I am today if I had stayed in rural Michigan. Experiencing other cultures and meeting so many incredible, intelligent, inspiring people has shaped me in ways I never imagined.

I had to go to Atlanta to prove to myself that it was possible to make a cross-country move, while having the safety of my in-laws being there to help.

I had to go to Austin to find some of my favorite friends, and learn how to cook kickass Tex-Mex. Oh, and so my kids could go to super diverse, awesome schools.

We had to come to Nashville to start over, where I would meet even more incredible people, including my new husband, and all of my super dope, creative, strong female friends.

Of my grandmother’s six grandchildren, I am the only one who left and stayed gone. I’ve always been ok with being the black sheep in our family, and I’ve always been grateful that I chose to chase my dreams instead of bending to the expectations of my sweet grandmother.

I’m grateful that I chose to explore the world, much to the terror of my poor mother. I’m grateful that I didn’t allow her fears to limit me, or make me afraid to go new places and try new things. I’m grateful that I chose to be my own person, and trust my own intuition to guide me, even when she didn’t love my choices.

Here’s the thing: Life is short and we only get one. We waste a lot of time searching and seeking, or letting the expectations and demands of others shape our journeys. But, at the end of the day, our choices are our responsibility, and the consequences of those choices accumulate to become our reality.

If we take time to get present with ourselves, and get super honest and brave, we always know what we really want. We always know what is best for us, what is true, what is right. Allowing ourselves to choose with our hearts is a beautiful gift that multiplies every single time we do it. (Even if grandma doesn’t agree.)