Spoiler alert: This contains key moments from the movie It Ends With Us.

There’s a moment early in the movie that hit me hard. Lily Bloom is clear about her boundaries: “I don’t do casual.” It’s such a simple yet powerful statement. She knows what she wants, and she isn’t afraid to stand up for it.

And yet, even as she asserts herself in this way, there’s a glaring blind spot. Multiple times, her boyfriend, Ryle Kincaid, lashes out in fits of rage, hitting her. And each time, they both excuse the behavior as accidental. Watching this, I felt a visceral reaction—not just to the violence but to the way they both justified it, the way the truth was buried under layers of rationalization.

It left me thinking: What have I excused or justified in my own life? What blind spots have I carried with me, unaware of the damage they were causing?

For years, one of my biggest blind spots was with my gender expression and the clothes I wore. I always felt like I was compromising something—though I wasn’t fully aware of why. I had this deep-seated belief that I wasn’t attractive or sexy, and I thought the problem was me. I couldn’t quite figure out dating and assumed it was because I wasn’t enough.

It never occurred to me that sexy might not have a universal definition. In my mind, sexy meant dresses, tight jeans, heels, makeup, lipstick. Basically, everything I was not. But I tried. Oh, how I tried.

I wrestled with skinny jeans. I hunted for wedges I could tolerate. I convinced myself that I should love purses because I loved bags (surely, this wasn’t a leap). But it was a leap—a chasm, really—and no matter how much I pushed, I couldn’t make it work. And every time I tried, I reinforced the belief that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t attractive, wasn’t lovable.

Fast forward to the moment that changed everything: I fell in love with a woman.

In the early days of our relationship, I had what I now call “the underwear crisis.” I had this idea in my head that I was supposed to wear lingerie to please her. But as I agonized over it, devastated by the thought of letting her down, I learned something that turned my world upside down. She didn’t want that. That wasn’t what she found attractive about me.

What was? We didn’t know yet.

So, I experimented. I tried different kinds of underwear until I landed on women’s boxers. The first time I put them on, something inside me shifted. It was like a part of me that had been asleep for decades finally woke up. I felt powerful, bright, alive. I stood there in my room, looking at myself in the mirror, and said out loud: “Shit! I can do anything in these underwear!”

It was like being six years old again, wearing Underoos and feeling invincible. That small choice—a pair of boxers—broke open a door I didn’t know I had locked. It gave me permission to step outside the box I had shoved myself into for years.

I marched to my closet and made a deal with myself: If I didn’t 100% love it, it was gone. And let me tell you, 90% of my wardrobe disappeared that day. It was a bittersweet moment—relief mixed with grief for the years I spent compromising, for the ways I had policed myself without even realizing it

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How do we get so blind to the ways we box ourselves in?

The movie reminded me of the importance of people who hold mirrors for us. For Lily, it was a friend who loved her unconditionally and helped her see what she wasn’t ready to. It’s a brutal thing, seeing ourselves clearly—our patterns, our compromises, our self-justifications. And sometimes, we push those people away because the truth they show us is too hard to face.

But breaking out of those false beliefs, stepping outside the boxes we’ve built for ourselves? That’s where freedom is.

For me, it started with a pair of boxers. Breaking out of the box by literally wearing boxers. It’s a funny play on words, but the truth behind it is no joke. It’s a reminder that we all have blind spots—places where we’re still trapped by old beliefs or habits that no longer serve us.

So, here’s my question for you: What’s one box you’ve been keeping yourself in? And who are the people in your life who hold up mirrors for you, showing you what you might not yet be ready to see?

Let’s break some boxes together.