If you’re at the point of realising you’ve lost sense of who you are, then you may be asking yourself – how on earth did that happen?!
And alongside the realisation that you lost yourself somewhere along the way in life – you could be feeling an array of emotions -disbelief, anger, shame, guilt.
What if I told you that this isn’t your fault? And that when you understand why you lost sight of yourself, you can begin to let go of those emotions and make different choices for yourself.
As a baby or a toddler, you didn’t question your worth or your reason for being – you just were! You lived in the moment – no worrying about what you did yesterday or what might happen next week. You lived in the present moment and you were very good at making your needs known and expecting they would be met.
And then somewhere along the way you became aware of the messages and expectations of those around you. You were fed a daily diet of do’s and don’t’s. You learned that compliance, obedience, rules and regulations were the order of the day. You realised that individuality and self-expression were often not welcomed.
And you may have begun to question your worth, and realise that aspects of you were deemed not to be ok. Maybe you were told you were too loud, too quiet, too chatty, or too sensitive. So you began to hide more and more of who you were and became who you were expected to be.
These messages were daily, constant and subtle – so subtle that you didn’t even question them. We’ve each been impacted by them to some degree and added to this will be your unique experiences.
Maybe you had parents who weren’t able to parent you appropriately or a school system that was harsh and didn’t accommodate your needs. The possibilities are endless, but these experiences and beliefs go deep within. You take them with you into adult life and they are what you use to navigate your way through life.
They can lead you to make choices that continue to take you further away from who you are. You inadvertently end up choosing a job or a career path that doesn’t fulfil you, but it’s what’s expected and it pays the bills. Perhaps you end up in relationships and friendships that are toxic, with people who undermine your self-worth and sense of self.
And if you enter motherhood maybe you begin to live your life through the lives of your children, devoting yourself to them and their every need. Until one day, they leave home and you begin to wonder what your purpose is, now that you have no one to care for on a daily basis!
And then you reach a point in life and realise that you have unwittingly participated in forgetting who YOU really are. That you made choices driven by the expectation of others and through obligation, social and cultural conditioning.
And you did so, to fit in and be accepted. It’s such a strong survival instinct to be part of the “pack”.
As you may have realised, there are a whole range of instilled beliefs and experiences that have taken you away from who you are. It’s a club that SO many of us signed up to, so know that you are not alone in this.
From this place of understanding, – my wish is that you release yourself from any notion that you’re to blame. That you begin to make different choices for yourself. Choices that light you up, choices that fulfil your needs, choices that bring you joy.
That you do so in the knowledge that you are worthy and you are more than enough! And that you move one step at a time towards remembering ALL of who YOU are.
If you would like inspiration, connection and support to remember ALL of who you are, come and join our community – She Remembered Who She Was – from Lost to Thriving in Midlife.
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