Finding Yourself

People will often say that they need to go “find themselves”. They embark on gap years, do cleanses and detoxes, declutter or go on some journey to exotic far-off places.

The truth is we don’t need an elaborate trip. The only journey (and probably most important) we need to embark on is a journey inward. Mustering up the courage to look in the mirror and really see who it is we truly are. To join the dots in a coherent narrative about our life and how we got to be where we are.

For we are not lost (usually merely unconscious). We are not some crumpled up note that is to be found in last year’s winter coat. That is not how it works.

Your true self is right there. Buried under layers of trauma, cultural conditioning, patriarchal dogma, people’s opinions and subsequent attachments and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a child that became your false beliefs about who you are.

Therefore, “finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An excavation, an unlearning, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.