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Radical Responsibility: The Power of Reclaiming Your Story.
- Jessica Matthysen
- Feb 24
- 4 min read
Radical Responsibility: The Power of Reclaiming Your Story.
What if the thing keeping you stuck isn’t your circumstances—but the story you keep telling yourself?"
“The way to reclaim control of a life that feels adrift, is to take radical responsibility”
Have you paused? Measured it? Put a number to it yet?
Do you even recognize what it is you're feeling?
Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that your emotions don’t matter—as long as things get done.
That you don’t have the time to sit with discomfort, to question what you really need, to allow yourself to want something more.
In a post last week, I spoke about what I call The Awakening—that moment when you look in the mirror and no longer recognize yourself. A moment often accompanied by anxiety, shame, guilt, and burnout—a kind of exhaustion that seeps into your bones, the kind that no amount of sleep can fix.
Or maybe, like me, you simply forgot what it feels like to exist inside your body rather than just inside your head.
When I finally stopped resisting myself, when I sat down and faced the truth, I realized that discontent had settled into every corner of my life. But I wasn’t measuring happiness or sadness. I was measuring vitality—and by that metric, I was 95% away from the life I wanted to feel.
"You're drowning in His-Story," she said.
His. Not mine.
The story of who I was with him.The story of the woman I had been in his presence.The story of who I thought I was supposed to be.
And she was right.
I had trapped myself inside the past, replaying it over and over until it became the foundation of my identity. I had defined myself through suffering—through rejection, abandonment, failure.
And I had laid the blame at someone else’s feet to absolve myself.
I allowed myself to play the victim.
That’s not to say I wasn’t shortchanged, or that he shouldn’t have done better. But realizing that neither of these narratives would bring me peace meant I had to strive for something else.
Side Note: The he/him in this story refers to an actual person. But let’s be honest—we do the same thing with the companies we work for.
This doesn’t just apply to relationships. It applies to leadership, career decisions, and the way we navigate success. Too often, we wait for a company, a boss, or an external force to recognize our worth, set our boundaries, or dictate our next move. But if we don’t take radical responsibility for our own path—no one else will.
Do you know who you are, what you truly want, what you value in life...
Do you know how to set boundaries, say no,
Do you know how to advocate for yourself and why,
Do you have the courage to walk away from something that no longer aligns with you...
This is radical responsibility. Because if you keep telling the same story, you will never be anything but that story.
I understood then that if I wanted things to change, I had to change.That’s the only thing I could control—me.
So, I rewrote my own damn story.
✅I chose to be brave, even when I felt like a fraud. Brave enough to face the world head-on despite my feelings of inadequacy. Brave enough to voice my needs, even when it felt terrifying.
✅I chose to be defiant—to reject the conditioning that told me I existed for someone else. To push back against the quiet, insidious obligations that had shaped me. Despite my mother’s best efforts to raise an independent woman, I had internalized the “good girl” complex, constantly placating and fulfilling the needs of others at the expense of my own.
✅I chose to show up with grace, not for anyone else, but for myself—so I could feel proud of who I am and how I move through the world. Rather than letting resentment, anger, or toxicity take root toward a system or person I couldn’t change, I focused on what I could control—my response, my energy, my integrity. Grace became my anchor, a balm that reminded me to soften, to breathe, to release control instead of forcing outcomes. Because I refused to let pain harden me into someone I didn’t recognize
✅I chose allurement—not force. I wanted to pull life towards me, rather than fight my way through it. To lean into softness, to create a life infused with passion, creativity, and aliveness.
Because the dissolution of myself wasn’t just about falling apart—it was about making space. For me. For the life I was meant to step into.
And if you’ve ever found yourself in that space—caught between who you were and who you’re becoming—you know how messy it can be. It’s a sh*t show, I know. The unraveling. The uncertainty. The emotions that come in waves, spinning you out of control.
And it’s hard to sit with that alone. So, let’s not.
If something came to mind while reading this, I’d love to hear from you. Message me privately, or share your thoughts.
👉 Who or what have you been blaming for too long—and what would change if you let that go?
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