Her Reflection

February 9, 2025

There are certain moments in life that don't feel significant while they're happening.

They don't arrive with dramatic music.

They don't announce themselves as turning points.

Most of the time, they happen on ordinary days.

In ordinary rooms.

While you're doing ordinary things.

And then years later, you realize your life quietly split into two versions of itself that day.

Before.

And after.

Mine happened in front of a bathroom mirror.

I wish I could tell you it was some grand spiritual awakening.

It wasn't.

I was exhausted.

The kind of exhausted that settles into your bones and makes everything feel heavier than it should.

The girls needed something.

Bills needed attention.

Relationships needed energy.

The future needed answers.

Everyone seemed to need a piece of me.

And I had spent so many years giving pieces away that I hadn't noticed how little remained.

I remember standing there staring at my reflection.

The bathroom light was harsh.

The kind that highlights every flaw and every sleepless night.

My locs were pulled back.

My face looked tired.

Not physically tired.

Soul tired.

There is a difference.

I stared.

And stared.

And stared.

Waiting for something.

Recognition.

Connection.

Familiarity.

Anything.

But instead, a strange feeling crept over me.

A feeling I couldn't immediately explain.

The woman looking back at me felt familiar...

and unfamiliar at the same time.

Like seeing someone you used to know years ago.

Someone important.

Someone you've somehow forgotten.

I remember gripping the edge of the sink.

A knot forming in my stomach.

Because the question appeared before I could stop it.

Who are you?

Not my name.

Not my roles.

Not my responsibilities.

Me.

Who was I underneath all of it?

Who was I when nobody needed anything from me?

Who was I before survival became my personality?

The question followed me for weeks.

Maybe months.

It showed up while washing dishes.

While folding laundry.

While lying awake at night.

While driving.

While creating artwork.

While staring out windows.

Everywhere.

Like a ghost demanding attention.

Who are you?

At first, I answered with accomplishments.

Mother.

Wife.

Artist.

Business owner.

Caregiver.

Provider.

Dreamer.

But none of those answers felt complete.

Because those were things I did.

Not who I was.

The realization frightened me.

Because if all the roles disappeared tomorrow...

Would I still know myself?

I think motherhood intensified this lesson.

Not because motherhood is a burden.

Because it isn't.

Motherhood transformed me.

It expanded my capacity for love in ways I didn't know were possible.

But motherhood can also become a mirror.

One that reveals where you've abandoned yourself.

For years, I poured so much into everyone else that I slowly drifted away from myself.

Not intentionally.

Gradually.

Like a shoreline eroding grain by grain.

I stopped asking what I wanted.

Stopped asking what brought me joy.

Stopped asking what excited me.

My needs became background noise.

Something I'd get to later.

Later became months.

Months became years.

And somewhere inside that process, I disappeared.

Not completely.

Just enough to feel lost.

The hardest part was realizing nobody had done this to me.

Not really.

There was no villain.

No single event.

No one person to blame.

This happened because I believed being needed was the same thing as being valuable.

So I kept giving.

And giving.

And giving.

Until there wasn't much left.

Then something unexpected happened.

Spirit didn't tell me to find myself.

Spirit told me to remember myself.

There is a difference.

Finding implies something is lost.

Remembering implies it was there all along.

That shifted everything.

Because suddenly I wasn't searching for a new identity.

I was excavating an old one.

Like an archaeologist brushing dirt from buried treasure.

Carefully.

Patiently.

Layer by layer.

I started asking different questions.

Not:

"What should I be?"

But:

"What have I always been?"

The answers surprised me.

Creative.

Curious.

Playful.

Visionary.

Sensitive.

Deeply intuitive.

A storyteller.

A builder.

A healer through expression.

Those qualities existed long before the titles.

Long before the responsibilities.

Long before the expectations.

They were the roots.

Everything else was just branches.

I think about that mirror often now.

Not because I fear it.

Because I'm grateful for it.

That reflection exposed something I desperately needed to see.

The distance between who I truly was and who I had become while surviving.

And survival isn't wrong.

Sometimes survival is necessary.

Sometimes survival saves us.

But survival was never supposed to become a permanent address.

At some point, we have to stop surviving long enough to start living.

I think that's what this year has been teaching me.

Not how to become someone else.

Not how to reinvent myself.

But how to return.

Return to the woman who loved creating before she worried about monetizing it.

Return to the woman who trusted her intuition before she questioned every feeling.

Return to the woman who laughed freely before responsibility convinced her life had to be serious.

Return to the woman who believed beauty was worth noticing.

Return to the woman who knew her worth before she attached it to usefulness.

Maybe healing isn't a journey forward at all.

Maybe sometimes it's a journey home.

And perhaps that's why the woman in the mirror didn't blink back that day.

She wasn't ignoring me.

She was waiting.

Waiting for me to remember her.

Waiting for me to come home.

And now that I finally am...

I don't think she's going anywhere.