True Self

Dear Creator,

Have you ever had a moment when you felt completely, unmistakably like yourself? You weren't thinking about how you were coming across or whether you were doing it right. You were laughing, making something, sitting with someone you love, and for once there was no little part of you standing outside the moment watching yourself live it.

I love those moments because they make me wonder about all the others. The ones when I am technically doing everything right but feel half a step removed from my own life. I can be productive, helpful, capable, even successful, and still have this subtle sense that I am performing my life more than inhabiting it.

For a long time, I assumed becoming more myself would require becoming better first. More confident. More healed. Less complicated. Better at boundaries. Less worried about what everybody thought. Surely there was some wonderfully evolved Ansley waiting farther down the road, and once I finally got my act together, I would catch up with her.

Except every once in a while, there I was already. Your True Self is the you who feels most like home.

Your YOUness strengthens our ONEness. The world doesn't need a more polished imitation of somebody else. It needs the particular expression that can only move through you.

So we're not going to begin this Petal by asking who you should become. We're going to begin somewhere much more interesting. Who is already here? I'm really glad we get to find out.

Creatively yours,
Ansley