The Person Who Stayed

There is someone in your life you have not spoken to in weeks. Maybe months. And if something cracked you open tonight, they are the first person you would call. Not because you talk every day. Because they know your silences.

We have an entire vocabulary for the courage it takes to leave. We have almost none for the courage it takes to stay — to watch someone you love become a person you did not plan for, and choose them anyway. Not the old them. The becoming them.

In this episode, Lisa names the kind of love that does not announce itself. The person who changed the questions they asked. Who stopped meeting you at the surface and followed you down to wherever you were actually living. Who grieved the old you, quietly, so they could be present with who you are now.

This episode will make you think of someone. And it will ask you to do something about it. 

Soul to Soul drops every Monday.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

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Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to Soul to Soul with Lisa Carter Bawa, where science meets soul. There's someone in your life you have not spoken to in weeks, maybe months, and if something happened to you tonight, something real, something that cracked you open, they are the very first person you would call. Not the person you talk to every day, not the person who knows your calendar, the person who knows your silences. The one who would pick up at two in the morning and not ask why you were calling, because they already know that if you're calling at two in the morning, the why does not matter. The only thing that matters is that you called. You know exactly who I'm talking about. You're thinking of them right now. And here's the thing I want to name today, the thing I think most of us carry without ever saying it out loud. That person chose to stay, and you have never fully reckoned with what that cost them. We are a culture that is obsessed with leaving. Think about the stories we celebrate. The hero leaves the village, the visionary leaves the company, the artist leaves the relationship that was holding them back. We have an entire mythology built around departure, the courage of walking away, the freedom of the open road, the nobility of choosing yourself over the thing that no longer serves you. And I've told some of those stories on this podcast. I have given language to the grief of outgrowing. I have sat in the hard truth that growth sometimes means distance from people you love. I stand by every word of that. But here is what has been sitting on me lately, and it will not leave me alone. We have an entire vocabulary for the courage it takes to leave. We have almost no vocabulary for the courage it takes to stay. And I do not mean stay as in tolerate. I do not mean stay as in settle. I do not mean the kind of staying that is really just fear dressed up as commitment. I mean the kind of staying that requires a person to watch you become someone they did not plan for and choose you anyway. Not the old you, not the comfortable you. The you that is mid-demolition, the you that is pulling up floorboards and has not yet laid new ones, the you that is harder to love right now because you are harder to predict. That kind of staying is not passive. That is one of the bravest things a human being can do. I want to walk you through what staying actually requires, because I do not think we appreciate it. I think we absorb it the way we absorb oxygen, constantly, desperately, without once stopping to be staggered by it. When you start to change, really change, not the kind of change you announce on social media, but the kind that rewires how you show up in every room, you become temporarily a stranger to the people who know you best. You stop laughing at the things you used to laugh at. You go quiet in conversations that used to energize you. You start saying no, and the no sounds different than it used to because it is coming from a different place. It's not diplomatic anymore, it's not cushioned, it's just clear. And clarity, when people are used to your accommodation, can feel like coldness. You start drawing boundaries, and the boundaries look like walls to people who are used to walking through you whenever they want. You start speaking in your own voice, and your own voice does not sound like the one they fell in friendship with. It is lower, slower, less eager to please. Now, put yourself on the other side of that. You're watching someone you love become a person you do not entirely recognize. The rhythms are different, the jokes do not land the same way. The easy shorthand you built over years is suddenly full of gaps. You reach for the person you knew and your hand closes on air. Most people in that moment do one of three things. They leave, not always dramatically, sometimes they just stop calling, stop showing up, let the silence do the work of the goodbye they could not bring themselves to say. Or they stay, and but they stay by refusing to see the change. They keep relating to who you were, they talk to the ghost of you, they bring up old stories and old versions so often that you start to wonder if the person you are becoming is even visible to them. Or, and this is the rare one, they grieve the old you quietly on their own time, without making it your burden to carry. They let go of the person they knew, and then they turn toward the person you are becoming, and they say, not with words, but with presence, I am still here, and I am not here for who you were, I am here for who you are, even though neither of us knows exactly who that is yet. That is extraordinary, and we almost never call it that. You know the person who stayed by what they stopped doing as much as by what they kept doing. They stopped asking how is work? They stopped measuring your life by the metrics you used to offer as proof that you were fine, the grants, the promotions, the titles, the numbers. They stopped requiring you to perform your own wellness. And they started asking questions that had no professional answer. What are you reading that is not for work? When is the last time you laugh so hard your stomach hurt? What are you afraid of right now that you have not told anyone? Those questions are not casual. Those questions are a decision. A person who asks you those questions has decided, without announcing it, to stop meeting you at the surface and to follow you down to wherever you're actually living. Even if it is darker down there, even if you do not have a map, even if you cannot promise them you're going to come back up as someone they recognize, they follow you down anyway. That is not loyalty. I want to make this distinction because I think it matters. Loyalty says, I will stand by you, and that is beautiful. But what the person who stayed does is something more costly than standing by someone. They move, they adjust, they release their own expectations of who you were supposed to be so they can be present with who you actually are. Loyalty holds its ground. What I'm describing is something that gives up its ground willingly so it can meet you on yours. The word for that is not loyalty. The word for that is devotion. Here's what the person who stayed changes in you. And I need to say this carefully because it is the most important thing I will say in this episode. They teach you that you do not have to be finished to be loved. I'm gonna say that again because I need it to land somewhere deeper than your ears. You do not have to be finished to be loved. Do you know how many of us are living as though the opposite is true? How many of us are curating our growth, packaging our evolution, waiting until we have a clean narrative before we let anyone see us in the middle of it? How many of us believe at the deepest level that we have to arrive before we can be held? We let people see the keynote, but not the car ride after. The publication, but not the rejection that came before it. The composure, but not the cost of maintaining it. And the person who stayed says, not with words, but with years of presence, I do not need the keynote. I do not need the composure. I need the person underneath all of it, the one who is tired, the one who is uncertain, the one who is becoming something and does not yet have a name for it. That reorders something inside you. Because once you know that one person, even just one, can see you unfinished and stay, the performance starts to lose its grip. Not all at once, not overnight, but slowly. The armor gets heavier than the vulnerability. And you start to wonder, what if I do not need to be complete to be worthy of connection? What if the middle is not something to survive, but something to be witnessed? That is what the person who stayed gives you. Not answers, not advice, not a framework for becoming, a witness. And a witness, it turns out, is the thing you needed more than any of it. So here's where I want to land today. And I'm gonna ask you to do something, not just feel something. You thought of someone at the beginning of this episode, the person you would call at two in the morning, the person who's been there through the version of you that had to fall apart so the next one could breathe. I want you to ask yourself, do they know? Not in a vague, I appreciate you way, not in a quick text with a hard emoji. Do they know specifically what their staying meant? Do they know that they changed the questions and you noticed? Do they know that their patience with your silences is the reason you eventually found your voice? Do they know that when you were mid-demolition, mid-becoming, mid-everything, their presence was the only thing that made the unraveling feel survivable? Because here's what I believe, and I believe it all the way down. We owe our grief to the people who left. That is real and that is sacred. But we owe our becoming to the people who stayed. And the people who stayed are almost never the ones who ask to be thanked. They are the ones who changed the questions, who followed you down without asking for a map, who grieved the old you privately so they could love the new you out loud. So do not text them. I need you to hear me on this. Do not text them. Call them. Write them a letter they can hold in their hands. Sit across from them and let your voice shake if it needs to. Tell them what they're staying built in you. Tell them that the person you're becoming has their fingerprints on it, not because they shaped you, but because they gave you the safety to shape yourself. Tell them you see it now, that you see them now, that the quietness of their love did not make it invisible. It just took you this long to find language big enough to hold it. Find them and tell them they are the reason you survived your own becoming. That is soul to soul, not roll to roll. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Soul to Soul. I hope our conversation today gave you something to sit with. Maybe a new perspective, maybe a spark of motivation, or maybe just a reminder that you're not alone in this work. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with one colleague, a mentee, or anyone who could use a little encouragement on their journey. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. It also helps people find this podcast. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm always there, always in conversation. If you're interested in going further, you can find me on Substack at Soul to Soul Leadership.substack dot com. Or email me at Lisa at Soul to Soul Leadership.com. I read every one. This is Dr. Lisa Carterboa, and this has been Soul to Soul.