The parts of you that kept you safe can become the parts that keep you small.

Our lives are like trees. Parts of us are branches. Some grow strong because we needed them—because they kept us alive in a season where survival was the job.

And then the season changes.

A tree doesn’t “hate” a branch when it prunes it. It just stops feeding what no longer helps it thrive.

I’ve been thinking about that lately in the most mundane place: how I spend money.

For a long time, money was a real barrier. I couldn’t say yes to things. I chose cheaper meals. I went to fewer parties. I skipped concerts, classes, and little community events—even when they would’ve been good for me.

That wasn’t a moral failing. It was a strategy.

It was how I stayed safe.

Spending money means danger.

If you grew up with scarcity, you might recognize this reflex: the danger can be gone, and the strategy keeps running anyway.

At a certain point, I wasn’t skipping things because I couldn’t afford them. I was skipping them because the part of me that learned “spending = unsafe” was still driving the car.

the rosebush problem

A rosebush will bud too many roses if you let it. It spreads its energy everywhere. The gardener prunes—not to punish the bush, but to concentrate its life into fewer, stronger blooms.

More color. More fragrance. More beauty.

Old parts of us work the same way. If a habit is still alive inside you, it will keep taking energy—attention, caution, inhibition—even when it’s no longer serving you.

And the cost is subtle. It’s not just the money you don’t spend.

It’s the world you don’t enter.

pruning isn’t self-hate

This is the part I want to be careful about: pruning is not rejection.

It’s not “I’m bad for being this way.”

It’s “that version of me did what it had to do.”

I can feel gratitude for the branch that helped me survive and still recognize that it’s blocking sunlight now.

Real pruning isn’t one dramatic cut. It’s a practice. It’s the daily moment where you notice the old reflex and choose differently.

a 90-day experiment

So here’s what I’m playing with: for 90 days, I want to make decisions less by price and more by desire.

Not “spend recklessly.” Not “burn your savings.” Just a simple reweighting:

• If I want to go, I go.
• If I want to learn, I pay for the class.
• If the ticket is $50 or $100 and it lights me up, I let myself say yes.
• I keep my basic commitments handled—rent, bills, the boring stuff—then I stop letting “table stakes” costs veto the rest of my life.

The point isn’t to prove a philosophy.

The point is to test a fear.

Is my life materially worse after 90 days of saying yes? Do my goals collapse? Or does something else happen—more joy, more connection, more serendipity…maybe even new opportunities I would never have stumbled into from the safety of my apartment?

Because there’s a quiet possibility here:

When you stop treating money like a gate, you start participating in the world again.

And participation has a strange way of paying you back—in friendships, in momentum, in confidence, in aliveness.

Letting go in life isn’t just about things or people.

Sometimes it’s about letting go of old parts of yourself—with respect, with gratitude, and with the willingness to make room for a different season.