A Journey to Self-Discovery.
I have the clearest memory of sitting down with a mentor one autumn afternoon as she asked me, “Who are you, Jess?”.
She had invited me to leave aside the titles and labels I held dear, that of mother, daughter, sister, friend, etc. and enquire more into the seat of my heart and soul, who was I?
I paused.
Silence.
At that time I was in the ‘fourth trimester’ of early parenthood with a wee babe on my boob, and newly separated from my ex-husband. I was so deeply devoted to this new identity of mother, and fiercely attached to the accompanying label of solo-parent that allowed me to view the world from a place of martyrdom. I was nothing but the solo-mother, in her own clouded bubble.
She prompted me again.I took a deep breath and asked myself again, who am I?
I found…nothing.
I didn’t know who I was.
In that painful moment I saw how I had tied my identity and worth to the labels I wore and the things that I did.
I had spent a young life-time morphing myself chameleon-like to the image and expectations of the roles I played at various stages of my life, from student to athlete to girlfriend to backpacker to corporate psychologist to aid worker to yogi to mother… and all the shades in between. But I didn’t know who the hell I was.
Fuck.
Who was I?
As she waited for my answer I fought the desire to crawl into a ball and pretend the question had never been asked.
I can still feel the vivid red flush rise to my cheeks, a swell of panic and the desperate inadequacy. I ummed and ahhed, bowed my head, and hid behind a modest smile.
Nothing.
[Side note: Here’s a lesson I learned along the way. Modesty is not the same thing as humility. We can be humble and grateful and gracious in knowing our strengths and weaknesses, but modesty is a trap. Modesty is surface level bull-shit that has you pretending you are less than you are. As Maya Angelou once said “Modesty is a learned affectation”. In modesty we belittle our own talents and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from others, to avoid making another feel lacking, or to people please - it took me time to realise that in acting modest I was actually being manipulative.]
Nothing!!!
How long had I been hiding for? … What the hell! Why have I never even asked myself this question? I was furious at myself.
And you know what, *cringe* I actually ended up asking this lady who I barely knew who she thought I was.
I say cringe, for at the time I was intensely ashamed at my inability to answer this most basic yet critical of questions. I was ashamed to admit that actually I was lost, super lost, and I needed someone to save me.
Now however I have oodles of compassion for that girl who was only just starting to remove her blinkers to find out that she had been hiding.
Coming Home
Many of us wear fashionable masks that keep us blind, numb and carefree. But for some of us there comes a point in our lives when something begins to shift. Whether via a form of illumination, education, or hitting a rock bottom, something causes us to question the part we play in our curated lives.
As we begin to question we encounter all the identities we hide behind, we find many which do not serve us. We see the conditioning we are a product of, the systems of oppression we have bought into, and how this has meant we have unknowingly dishonoured our truth again, and again. Look closer and we see what was modelled to us by our nearest and dearest, feel deeper and we encounter the core wounds that mark our lives. We realise that our dreams and desires and truths have been squashed along the way. We sigh at how uninspired and burnt-out we have become. That in living the status quo in the fast and numb lane we lost who we really are.
It can be painful this awakening. Deeply angering and frustrating. But also hopeful, and eager - for a reckoning is at hand.
We may wish to return to the numb oblivion, but what is seen cannot be unseen and we find that we can no longer keep living the way we were. .
So it becomes time to forge new paths, and charting this unknown territory can be both exhilarating and utterly terrifying.
We desire the change. But equally:
We fear change and the repercussions, and the possibility of what or whom we may lose as we choose, for the first time in a long time, to honour our self first.
We fear conflict and rejection as we interact with loved ones who expect us to think, talk and act the way we did before.
We fear who we will become, when we finally let our wildness free.
In the midst of the uncovering we may falter. At these points we have two choices:
To go back to the way things were; or
To lean further into the discomfort and unknown, and trust that there-in lies our truth (…for it does).
As we lean-in we learn that the darkness is our friend, that there is exquisite beauty in our pain, and that inevitably and oh-so tenderly something new, and profoundly alive is emerging. This is the phoenix rising from the ashes, the philosophers stone alchemising into the elixir of life. This is the surrender to birth and death.
This is the most wonderful and discriminating of feminine practices, the honouring of cycles with-in and with-out.
There is no rushing the time in the dark unknown. It has its own course to run. To be with it, truly with it, is the only way.
At least, this is what I have found.
I couldn’t answer my mentor’s question that day.
After I’d resisted and resisted I finally surrendered to a deeper exploration of who I was. I released the labels and identities and I contacted my truth - in all the shadow and all the light, and along the way I found my purpose. That is to support other women to embody their unique, unapologetic and radiant selves, to shine without apology nor guilty, and in doing so give back to the world a hundred-fold.
Your Journey
If you feel lost, if you find yourself playing small or stuck in the Good Girl, if you are currently meeting new edges and require support to move into what you truly desire, or if you felt like you had finally “got there” only to wake up the next day and have no idea who you are anymore (or is that just me?!) I have your back.
There is a beautiful and transformative pathway to support you to step into the fullest expression of yourself.
Join a community of other embodied women and ignite your desires, illuminate and integrate your shadow self, connect with your wild woman, awaken your sensual and pleasure-fuelled self, and find yourself transformed into the sovereign woman you were born to be. Radiant, full and free.
The doors are open for a limited number of women right now, and you are warmly invited to a complimentary no obligation discovery call to see if this is for you.
Book yourself in here.
Know someone who might need to read this? Pass it onto your friend and share the love - because the world needs more alive and embodied women.
xo
Jess