Sometimes the less we are certain of who we think we are the better

I was talking to a beautiful young woman on Zoom this morning. We started the chat at 7am, so it was pitch black outside and I was bleary eyed and looking less than shiny and polished. For her, in Australia it was 3pm, it was warm and sunny and she was glowing with health and vitality.

Now, this isn’t a post comparing the callowness of youth with the wisdom of midlife. The trade off of beauty for experience because we are all beautiful at all ages, and we are slowly throwing off the misogyny we lived with for far too long that told us women were more or less finished by forty. I have women friends in their 70s and 80s who are gorgeous.

Plus some of the wisest people I know are teenagers on TikTok who are teaching me so much about acceptance, inter-sectional humanity and being a good, well rounded, healthy in mind and body human being.

More this is about how, as her first question was ‘Who is Cynthia Curry?’  just how little I knew about myself now.

When I was in my early thirties, as the woman interviewing me is, I was so certain of who I was and what I was doing. It felt solid, unchangeable.

But that was because I was living on the surface, too scared for introspection, too afraid of going inside to explore who I was and what I wanted. Because what if I wasn’t doing the right thing? What if I wasn’t the right person? I was so scared of being judged and found lacking I tried to control everything around me, including how other people perceived me. – A kinda impossible task!

There I was doing all the things I’d been told I needed to do to be accepted, to be welcomed in.

Of course, I wasn’t accepted, I never felt welcome.

And now some 25  years later, 25 years of psychology learning, psychotherapy training, hypnosis training, attending lectures by leading psychiatrists at Harvard and Columbia, learning from cutting edge neuroscience researchers at Loyola and UCLA, reading more books than I can even remember…I realise I know so very little about who I am.

What I do know, more clearly than ever before is that I want to feel contentment and satisfaction in every moment. I don’t need to be happy all the time, I can feel and appreciate sorrow and grief, anger and pain as well as the positive emotions of happiness, joy, and bliss.

I accept life has ups and downs and I don’t try to control it to stay in an ‘up’ because I can’t face the ‘down.’

This journey that we are all on through life is easier at some stages than others. And I do believe that if you have experienced a ‘challenging’ childhood, you will have adapted to survive and that often means stepping into a role other people expected of you. When you live in that role long enough, you push down your truth and lose your sense of authentically knowing yourself.

But, we don’t have to stay there. We have a choice. We can regain ourselves and learn what we like, what we want, what calls us, what we want to show up for. And its the greatest part of this journey, it is going home and nothing ever feels better than that.

How do you do it?

Get still. Be quiet. Outside and inside. On your own. Sit. Close your eyes and ask for the layers of protection to drop away. Reveal yourself.

Be kind, gentle and true. You may show up as a feral child or a wild animal. Someone untamed. As you should be.

Make friends with this you, your truth which can live alongside your current self although you will find your preferences and choices start to change as you integrate your truth into your life. The false things you adopted to survive and fit in will fall away.

This process is an excavation, an awakening and a constant discovering. It is never done. There are always new layers to strip away, new levels to reveal.

However, it is a joy to do, it brings tears for what was lost and gratitude for what has been regained.

I am now totally uncertain of who I am because I’m a work in progress, yet I know myself better than ever before. One thing I know for sure is I love her. I love myself and I want to keep going, keep uncovering, keep revealing.

Do the work, its the only thing that truly matters.

If you don’t know who you are and what you truly want, you will never be happy, never feel long lasting satisfaction, never find contentment.

Love,

Cynthia xx

PS. You don’t have to travel alone. Join us in the Be Your Own LightHouse program. My guided hypnotic meditation program that meets weekly and connects us to our internal truth, to our Higher Self and to Infinite Consciousness. Its calling you home and this is the most joyous path to take with beautiful co-journeyers who will hold you in loving support and encouragement.