Reclaiming Your Voice: Coming Home to Your True Self
- The Broken & Beautiful
- Feb 1
- 3 min read
I found myself searching through much of my life for something I didn't fully understand had been lost. As far back as I can remember, I carried a sense that I wasn't enough. My role was defined early in life. So early I don't remember choosing it at all. A large part of that role was caring for the adults in my life when I was a child. I did that very well. Caretaking became my language, my value, my belonging.
I had my first child at eighteen. I married and eventually had five children altogether. I loved them dearly with everything in me. That love was genuine and real. It was also familiar, an extension of the one thing I was an expert at. How to care for others.
When Caretaking Becomes Identity
What failed me here wasn't the loving. It was that my identity and worth became wrapped so tightly inside these roles. Over time my sense of value and worth became connected to how much I was needed and how much love was returned to me in my relationships.
Most of my adult life was spent looking outward, convinced something was inherently wrong with me. I studied others, trying to become whatever I believed was good, acceptable and worthy. If I could just change more, try harder, do better, heal more, learn more… then maybe I would finally be enough. And when connection still felt uncertain or I felt inadequate I assumed the problem was my own internal defectiveness.
It would be some time before I had language for the journey, but what I was searching for was me. I would soon begin to understand what that really meant.
Healing Work and the Discovery of the Hidden Self
I did a lot of healing work. Spiritual healing, Spiritual Direction, Story Coaching, Counseling, IFS, Healing retreats. I longed to be made whole. As I participated in this type of work I was drawn to offering the work as well. My own experience and then training in these modalities gave me tools to recognize the patterns and gain language for my own story and experience.
Something slowly started to become clear. I was within myself somewhere… locked away for preservation.
My system had learned how to survive early on. It protected me by keeping me small and shaping me into what was most needed around me. That self kept me safe and it kept my truer voice quiet.
Learning That the Truer Voice Exists
For such a long time, I had no idea that truer voice even existed. But as I began to experience safe places and learn about trauma and restoration through experiencing good coaches and directors and witnesses and coming to understand the hows and whys through education and personal experience I began to feel safer inside my body and my relationships.
I started to hear something, not loudly, not all at once, but enough to start recognizing what I heard was my own voice. Those that held that sacred space for me helped the external noise quiet long enough to notice and listen to that inner space. I began understanding the parts of myself that had been locked away and started approaching my story and all of its pieces with compassion and curiosity.
I couldn't have done this alone, the steady presence of these others taught me that it was okay to listen and trust my own inner voice. To let it speak!
Reclaiming the Voice Through Listening
I discovered it had been waiting for me. I was surprised to realize again and again that I wasn't broken beyond repair, I wasn't deficient, though I did have new things to learn and practice. I didn't need to become someone else. I was created just right.
The people around me knew I needed permission to exist as myself. I learned to give that to myself also.
Finding and reclaiming my voice didn't look like learning how to speak louder. It looked more like learning how to listen quieter, to myself. It meant noticing what felt true, noticing what felt forced. It meant noticing my own thoughts and my own feelings. It meant letting go of the belief that my value was dependent on what I had to offer to others.
I have words for this journey now. I call it coming home.
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