You are the most beautiful when you are your true self.

Are you the person you were meant to be?

Just take a moment to reflect on this question.

How does it make you feel? Do you feel confident, clearheaded, and encouraged because you have a perfect understanding of who you are? Or maybe you feel timid, confused, and discouraged because you feel disconnected from your true self now more than ever before.

I completely understand.

Maybe it happens after you lose a friendship, a difficult breakup, a death in the family, a comment on social media, or just your own thoughts trying to make sense of the reality that surrounds you. Or maybe we don’t know when it happens, we just know we’re sitting in the thick of it all and are fighting for a way to catch our breath, to reconnect.

When I look back on my life, I can’t say there has ever been a full season where I felt 100% confident with who I was or how I viewed myself. Maybe when I was 2 years old and I only cared about picking flowers in my lion king nightgown, but who wouldn’t at an age when a naïve state of mind protected us from the outside world…

So, why did I write this post, you ask?

Coincidentally, I’m going through a huge transition period in my life that has put me in a place of confronting these truths head-on, and it hasn’t been pretty. It’s been raw, ugly, transformative, exciting, stressful, full of snotty tears and lots and lots of praying. And because of my own experiences, this topic has become so incredibly important to me and my own self-reflection.

If you know me, you know I’ve never believed I’m a good writer. Still, to this day, I feel insecure about how I write and what I write about.

“What if people think I’m unintelligent because I didn’t use commas the correct way or because I normally talk about surface level topics like beauty and fashion. Do I have any credibility on this? What will others think? Will they even care?”

Wait.

Why am I asking myself these questions in the first place? Why do I care?

I mean I already know the answers – there ARE people out there that will think I’m unintelligent, will question my credibility, and would rather I go back to talking about the next beauty product. That’s reality and I’m never going to be able to change it.

What I can impact is how I let those people make me feel, what I choose to believe is true, and what I do next. I’ve now realized that the only person holding me back is me and that my inability to control how others make me feel has ultimately kept me from chasing my dreams and has left me feeling disconnected from who I was meant to be. One more time:

“The only person holding me back is me and that my inability to control how others make me feel has ultimately kept me from chasing my dreams and has left me feeling disconnected from who I was meant to be.”

I may be speaking more to myself that I am to you at this point, but I just want you to know that this is real. Life is real. Hard decisions are real. Feeling alone is real. Having zero answers or direction is real. But ultimately it begs a bigger question. How can we truly be who God intended us to be if we’re the person standing in our own way?

It’s just time to be 100% honest with you. It’s time to be 100% honest with ourselves. Growth, dreams, goals, “success”.

None of it exists if how we view ourselves leaves us paralyzed in the moments when it means the most to keep pushing.

And the cool thing is, only you get to be you. Period.

Maybe you feel more lost than you did 2 minutes ago when you started reading this post or maybe this sounds all too real. For that, I will never apologize. I’ve realized now more than ever that sharing my experiences and my own journey to who I was created to be is how I feel most fulfilled and I hope that you find some truth in that as well. You never know when your perspective and transparency can completely shift someone else’s perspective and even change their life.

Putting this into words has been my wake-up call. Maybe it will be yours too.

• • •

Don’t worry, this conversation doesn’t end here! Soon I’ll be sharing a few of the ways I’ve been able to reconnect with who I am. I think it’s time that we start living the life we were created to live! Just remember, you are the most beautiful when you are your true self.

“You are the most beautiful when you are your true self.”

Love Y’all so so much.

Em