I believe that many of us lost our “selves” through painful experiences in early childhood. The purpose of our lives then, is to re-discover ourselves, to find out who we are and we can only do that when we connect with our “inner” selves. That, of course is one of the most challenging and difficult things to do because inside is where all of our past sorrow and pain and grief lie and as we turn our attention inward to ourselves we have to deal with it. However, that journey is incredibly rewarding and healing and empowering when we have the courage to take it on.
This is the journey I have been walking in my own life. My response to my own childhood experience was the belief that there was something wrong with me. This belief drove me to find a way of “fixing” myself, to make myself acceptable and lovable to those around me, to get approval from them. I became a self-improvement addict, fierce, fearless and obsessive in my attempts to find a fix for myself. Along the way I actually found my “self” instead and realized that I didn’t need to fix anything, that I just needed to see myself as whole and complete exactly the way I am. To realize that underneath all of the defense mechanisms, and the survival mechanisms and the coping strategies that my “self” was alive and well and that all I needed to do was just simply to love it. This is what The Evolving Self is all about.