As you begin to relate to yourself in a new way, you may find yourself noticing the places where you've had to protect yourself, perform, carry responsibility that was never yours, or put parts of yourself away in order to belong. Not because there is anything wrong with you, but because those ways of being once helped you survive.

Over time, you may find yourself listening inwardly with greater ease, understanding yourself more fully, staying with yourself when life becomes challenging, and responding to yourself with the same care you so naturally extend to others.

As survival fears begin to soften and more of you becomes available, life begins to feel less like something you have to manage and more like something you get to participate in. The creativity tied up in protection and the aliveness hidden beneath vigilance begin to emerge in ways that feel both familiar and new.

For me, there's something profoundly moving about walking beside another human being as they reveal what has been hidden, reclaim the parts of themselves they thought were lost, and open to a beauty they never knew was there.