Several years ago, I read a quote  by a woman named Emily McDowell. It landed on my Facebook feed and it read as follows, “Finding yourself” is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”

As I read those words, I recall sighing in resonance, an inner ‘yes’ taking hold and I found myself excited at the prospect of connecting with the true me. However, my excitement quickly gave way to disillusionment as I realized I had no idea what a process of unlearning and excavating for the sake of remembering myself really meant. In fact, I had no idea if I’d even know when I’d remember myself or if I’d recognize who it was I was trying to return to. 

At the same time, I had been reading Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star. A Harvard educated sociologist and life coach, Martha’s FYONS is a kind of a roadmap to help one disentangle from their people pleasing ‘social self’ shaped by culture and socialization and connect with what she then called the ‘essential self’, McDowell’s equivalent of “who you were before the world got its hands on you.” 

Needless to say, the words of both women hit home. My issue then, unbeknownst to me, was not only that my essential self was clouded over by cultural conditioning and false beliefs, but it was also deeply buried and blocked by a trauma informed personality, a version of me brought into being in childhood to help me survive and stay connected to those I was dependent on. As I got older, those survival traits that I would come to identify as me only strengthened, helping me fit into society, all the while completely masking anything authentic along the way.  Such is the way a human being develops. 

I believe that most of us, by necessity, are operating in different degrees of survival mode, working at doing good, being good, remaining faithful to jobs, relationships, lifestyles, habits, values, and belief systems that our dominant culture approves of, but that are simultaneously, and slowly, chipping away at our soul. We know we’re unhappy, but we just can’t pinpoint why. Or perhaps we think we do know why but feel trapped and helpless to do anything about it. 

In many instances, we forego having to face what might seem like life disrupting changes and manage to chug along keeping things status quo. But for some of us, life will repeatedly knock us over the head trying to get us to wake up and return to that deeply buried essential self. This latter reality has been my journey. 

Back in 2017, when I thought all that ailed me was a job I hated, I suddenly developed a set of mystery illnesses. I call them a mystery because at the time, despite numerous doctor visits, scans, and testing by traditional mainstream western medicine and eastern alternative practitioners, I was unable to get a diagnosis. Plagued by esoteric symptoms and no answers, I resigned from my career and left my hometown along with it. My essential self had had enough and my body gave out. 

Now in 2025, here I am. I’m still not 100%, but I’m better than I was and more myself than I’ve ever been although I’m still excavating and unlearning as McDowell says. It is an arduous process, but worth it.

My journey, like most, has not been a straight line – actually it’s been just the opposite. I’ve incorporated a multitude of modalities and treatments over the years; DNRS and Gupta brain retraining programs, contemplative spiritual and meditative practices, journaling, dietary changes and supplements, and done a whole lot of self-scholarship diving deep into the worlds of neuropsychology, neurobiology, trauma, and social science. 

Living The True You are my thoughts and reflections on my experience and what “finding yourself” looks like in the face of chronic illness and grief, and the multitude of ways we steadily and slowly heal, reclaiming our authentic selves and live in alignment with our deepest truths one small turtle step at a time.