Date: 04-11-2026
Tags: self-expression embodiment transformation
Source: Journals
How do I move through the world embodied, bold, & in alignment with my inner knowing? This has been the task I’ve wrestled with for so long now.
To speak my being forward.
Why is it so difficult for me?
All my life I’ve played a role—morphing myself into whatever I imagined others wanted me to be. People often seemed most comfortable with the smaller version of me, & so I intentionally reflected back to people the qualities I knew they wanted to see in themselves.
Never taking up too much space in a relationship, I have been a chameleon. I have not been myself. & now that I’m allowing my true self to emerge, I notice people shifting around me & not knowing how to respond to me. It’s not their fault—I have trained them to see me as a passive sycophant, how can I expect them to understand when I am no longer what they know me to me?
However, it is disorienting to watch the world around me shift as people reflect back to me something new. Once, the most important thing to me was the approval of other people, & so that’s what I got. “Everyone likes Megan,” was a phrase I heard all too often. I felt safe in knowing I was liked.
But being liked & being respected are not at all the same, & I was constantly being disrespected in ways big & small.
Since I’ve begun revealing my inner world & allowing myself to take up space, to say no, to disagree—I have not received the approval that was once so dear to me. But I’ve grown so much in self-respect. Practicing this embodiment of my inner world—bringing what is within out into the world—has been the most terrifying, vulnerable, & mentally & emotionally arduous work I’ve done in my healing process.
To speak my truth into the world—this is my Herculean task.
& I am only at the beginning.
I think the phobia I have of introductions is partly symbolic. It’s a simple declaration to the world around me of my self-proclaimed identity, but it’s profound in that—since I’ve been stripped of the masks I once presented with ease, & which protected me from being seen—I am finally speaking now as myself.
It’s just like that dream Robert Moss had of the native people putting the burning coals on his eyes, ears, & mouth, declaring that “henceforth you will only speak from the heart.” It’s just as if this is what has happened to me psychologically.
No matter how I try to throw up a persona to protect me from the world, there is nothing of that false, pretending energy left in me & I am left standing, shaky-legged, exposed & vulnerable before the dreadful “other.” That other whose gaze is painful, & whose presence feels to me like the weight of the whole world, pressing on me & casting me far into a dark & floating isolation.
This whole bringing what is within me out into the world is the most daunting & terrifying task.
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." - Gospel of Thomas