Finding my authentic self behind the mask...

How I stopped editing myself and lived into my authentic truth.

I recently shared on IG that I’ve been lying to you… and before I go and have you believe I regret it. I don’t.

I’ve been lying and I don’t regret it.

Why?

Because I’d been lying to myself too.

If you’re a human living in a world where “the matrix” (i.e. systems built by the ego/racism/sexism...) is the dominant reality--where your fullness isn’t welcomed, where your parents didn’t/couldn’t give you what you needed (even if they did their best)--You are probably lying to yourself too.

To be even more accurate; let’s just say we’ve all been editing:

Editing our true selves.

I want to let you in on my 2019 recap where I stripped back layers of my own editing (I’m talking my divorce, falling in love with a woman, biz realizations and break-throughs, setting bigger boundaries with family, etc.) I’ll also be sharing about why we edit, and how to tap back into your Authentic Self going forward.

If you want to skip to the helpful tips, please jump down to the bottom of this journal.

If you want the full scoop, keep reading.

In January of this year, it felt like something clicked in for me. My feet landed below me and I felt a sudden shift. My astrologer told me I had completed a 14-year cycle of the most intense self growth one can go through. She said, “life is about to get easier for you, you’ve had a really hard first quarter of your life, you know yourself, trust what you know.”

In the months that followed a chronic dissatisfaction arose in me. Anger. Grief. Disgust. I started to deeply feel the misalignment of my life, work, family system and marriage. I was pretending, and the more I kept pretending, the more angry I got.

How long had I been pretending?

Layer by layer, I started to see how I’d tolerated, care-taken, over-gave and showed up in my life as the “happy, responsible and uplifting one.” I’d literally taken my childhood trauma of having to parent a parent, and turned it into my marriage and business. Fuck. I was repeating traumatic co-dependent cycles on a deeper level than I was wanting to see.

Cue the grief.

Because if I was totally honest, I didn’t like care-taking. I felt that it was my JOB to care-take. (And because of the job I made for myself… it, in the way I’d created it, WAS MY JOB). My responsibility. But my authentic self was growing resentment.

When would my true desires for my life, business and love be as important as other people’s needs?

I started to embody what I call Sovereign Leadership in my business; slowly peeling back the manipulative and co-dependent marketing strategies that promised to help others in such a way that could only continue, as a mentor said, fueled by my own self-betrayal. I stopped care-taking clients, people in my programs, and trusted them to their own experience. This new ease and centered confidence in my business and mindset led to success (obviously) with 2 back to back launches showing the largest enrollments I’ve ever had.

Then I started getting honest with my partner about my true feelings as I allowed them to arise. I shared with him that the container of our marriage needed to close if I was to honor my path. This was a deep knowing I had been avoiding.

And on top of that, I shared that I was awakening to my own desire… I was also attracted to women.

Through the radical honesty, I also started being more honest with family. I began honoring my inner child. I started choosing to set the boundaries I had always needed, but had never before followed through on. Because my capacity for my own honest feelings had grown, I was able to fully feel the grief that came with acknowledging the trauma of my family system on a deeper layer than ever before. I was able to finally see that I had not ever felt safe, seen or like I belonged.

I literally closed a 9-year relationship and confronted deeply held family wounds all at once.

My inner child kept asking, ‘Will you create for me a safe place to let my authentic self be seen?”

Through the process of ending these co-dependent cycles that had been running the show, I started to see the root:

Very early in my life I’d internalized the message that it was not safe to be me.

See, we use our parents to mirror our sense of self in early-life. Then, we use our teachers, siblings, friends at school, the media, our religious organizations, all to tell us who we are and who we “should” be. So we start “projecting” a self that is managed, edited and contrived, to survive. (We begin lying).

As an adult, this manifested in my life as control.

Controlling my image.

Controlling what “content” goes out.

Controlling who knows me.

Controlling who *thinks* they do…

I’d been editing my authentic self. Hiding in plain sight. Hiding in the spotlight. Pretending. This control felt safer than being seen.

Until this year, I didn’t know how deeply I’ve been editing. Realizing how deep this went this year brought up more grief than I knew I had access to. I felt fake, like a fraud, like all this success maybe wouldn’t have happened if I’d been honest all along. But, after letting those feelings complete, what I know to be true is… it’s safe to be seen.

And you know who needed to see me, and accept my fullness? Me.

No amount of personality testing, understanding my horoscope or having people validate me would ever satiate the desire for really being my true self. It wasn’t an outline of my qualities I was looking for anyway, it was permission to be who I knew I was, shadows and all.

Was I really capable of betraying my own commitment to my husband and to myself? I was.

Was I really falling in love with a woman? I was.

Was I really using out-dated, patriarchal, manipulative, co-dependent marketing strategies? I was. (Manipulation is just editing to get what we want, after all).

Was I really going to let my deeply rooted anger at family arise and be spoken? I was.

Was I willing to honor what was true for me, even if it caused heartache to everyone involved?

I was.

I was willing. Willing to see my truth, even when it wasn’t pretty. Willing to belong with my desires, grief and darkness, even when it wasn’t what I thought I wanted. Willing to turn my back on the person I said I had been, willing to burn it all down with love, with compassion, with integrity.

And this my loves, this is how we become whole.

We stop editing when we feel safe in our own love. We free ourselves from the programming of “should” and honor our shadow as a real and valid part of ourselves.

We learn we can trust others to their own sovereignty, knowing they can handle our truth.

And, when we learn WE CAN HANDLE OUR OWN TRUTH, we become free.

So this is how we stop editing:

You decide to belong to yourself. (Sovereignty).
You decide to be honest with yourself. (Wholeness).
You decide to honor what’s real for you. (Re-Parenting).
You bring all the shadows to the light and offer them grace. (True Salvation).
You decide to see and validate yourself:
Self-Worth.

And it’s in this radical, authentic, soul-aligned way of living that we find we can belong everywhere we go, because we belong to and with ourselves.

No more “projecting” a self or editing yourself is needed; you are home in yourself, safe in yourself, you belong to yourself.

I’m not saying this has been easy. It hasn’t. But I can say peeling back the layers this year has allowed me to feel a freedom, self-knowing, deeper confidence and more embodied self trust than I’ve ever experienced.

It felt like a death. My false self died, and what was left was the version of me I’d been waiting for.

If you feel like you’re in the midst of waking up (and waking up even more) here are a few journal prompts that supported me in 2019