Meeting your authentic self
There is a version of you that exists underneath everything you have been told to be. An Authentic version.
Underneath the labels. Underneath the expectations. Hidden underneath the roles you learned to play so well that eventually you forgot they were performances in the first place.
I think most of us move through life believing we have to fit neatly into categories. Strong or soft. Good or bad. Confident or broken. Religious or rebellious. Masculine or feminine. Successful or struggling. Honestly, society hands us these narrow lanes before we are even old enough to know ourselves. Yet somewhere along the way we start mistaking those labels for identity.
We let our families define us.
Our relationships become our identity.
We let pain define us.
other people’s opinions become mirrors.
The outcome? Eventually we stop asking the most important question of all:
Who am I when nobody is watching?
Not who I was taught to be.
Or who survival required me to become.
Not who social media rewards.
and who people are comfortable with.
Just… me.
The truth is, most people never really meet themselves.
Not deeply anyway.
Maybe it’s because life moves too fast. Or, perhaps it’s because self awareness requires honesty, and honesty can be brutal. Lastly, maybe it’s because looking inward means risking the collapse of everything you thought you knew about yourself.
Real self discovery is not aesthetic. It’s not a perfectly curated healing journey with ocean views and expensive retreats and journal prompts written in pretty handwriting. (Although if I’m being honest that does sound amazing.) Sometimes healing looks ugly. Sometimes awakening arrives dressed as devastation.
Mine did.
The past year cracked me open in ways I did not think I could survive. There were moments that surviving was not on the to-do list. I lost people I loved. I questioned every emotion I had. Some days I didn’t recognize myself at all. I had full breakdowns. Rage. I unraveled. I cried until I couldn’t explain what I was even crying about anymore. Grief, fear, shame, anger, confusion. It all blurred together.
There were moments I felt completely untethered. Wanting to get out of my own skin.
But somewhere inside the wreckage, something beautiful and equally terrifying happened.
I met myself.
And She’s Not the polished version. Or the likable version. Not the version built for acceptance. I met the raw, complicated, contradictory human being underneath all of it.
And honestly, that introduction changed everything.
I realized I’m not just one thing.
None of us are.
Humans are layered. Complex. Contradictory. We carry entire lifetimes of experiences, beliefs, wounds, desires, memories, instincts, and identities inside us all at once. Psychologists actually have an entire language for it. Carl Jung called part of it the “shadow self,” the hidden pieces of ourselves we suppress because they feel unacceptable, painful, or inconvenient. Internal Family Systems therapy talks about how we all contain different “parts” of ourselves that show up for different reasons. Neuroscience even tells us the brain is constantly adapting and reshaping itself based on experience.
In other words, you were never meant to fit into one fixed identity.
You are evolving all the time.
The problem is that many of us spend years rejecting parts of ourselves instead of understanding them. We exile the messy emotions. bury the traits we were told were “unacceptable” or “too much”. We perform identities that earn approval while silently abandoning the pieces that don’t.
healing starts when you stop running from yourself.
For me, it looked like asking difficult questions.
- What genuinely triggers me?
- What wounds am I still carrying?
- What do I truly value outside of what I was taught?
- What parts of me are authentic, and what parts were built for survival?
- What do I love?
- What do I fear?
- What deserves forgiveness?
- What requires accountability?
That kind of self examination is INTENSE and UNCOMFORTABLE because it requires sitting with versions of yourself you probably don’t like very much.
But, it’s freeing.
The truth is, once you truly know yourself, you stop needing the world to define you.
I realized I can embody seemingly opposing truths at the same time.
I can be a Christian and be gay.
strong and breakable.
compassionate and savage.
healing and still hurting.
soft without being weak.
evolving without betraying who I used to be.
That is the true definition of authenticity.
Authenticity is the willingness to be honest about your complexity.
And maybe that’s what finding yourself really is. It’s not becoming someone new, it’s finally allowing yourself to become whole.
So, if you’re stuck in the muck, if life has beat you down to the point where you barely recognize yourself, keep going.Keep getting up.
I know it’s hard. And feels endless.
I know it’s lonely.
I know there are versions of yourself you want to avoid looking at.
But sit with her anyway.
Sit with the angry version.
The grieving version.
The scared version.
The embarrassed version.
The exhausted version.
Learn her.
Listen to her.
Understand why she became who she became.
Then, love her.
Not because every behavior was acceptable, but because every version of you was trying to survive with the tools she had at the time.
That’s where healing begins.
Not in pretending you are only light.
Not in denying the darkness.
But in learning to hold both with compassion.
You’re allowed to be layered.
And You’re allowed to change.
You’re allowed to outgrow identities that no longer fit.
You’re allowed to become someone your past self never imagined.
The most freeing thing you will ever realize is this:
You Are not now and never were never too much.
Or too complicated.
You were never meant to fit inside the small, comfortable boxes the world handed you.
You were meant to become fully, unapologetically yourself.
Authenticity looks good on you. 🖤
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