Let's work together!
When I stopped shrinking, everything opened up. I started taking up space without apologizing for it. Letting the weird, whimsical, different parts of me back in.
I didn't need to reinvent myself.
I just needed to stop hiding the one I already was.
I didn't need to become someone new. I needed to stop performing someone I never was.
So I started noticing every place I still shrank, at work, with family, in my own head, and asking why.
A slower, truer version of myself I could actually live inside.
Coming home to myself didn't look like a five-year plan or a perfect reinvention. It looked like small, honest moments, wearing the thing I actually liked, saying the thing I actually thought, letting myself be a little weird out loud.
It wasn't dramatic, but it was sacred.
Tiny acts of permission that reminded me I was still in there.
My Journey
There was a time I believed fitting in meant erasing the parts of me that felt too different. That being the weird one, the black sheep, meant something was wrong with me.
But it wasn't a flaw. It was a mold that was never built for me in the first place.
The turning point? Realizing every time I shrank myself to be accepted, I lost a little more of who I actually was.
SPOILER: THIS ISN'T A PERFECT ARC. IT'S A SPIRAL, WITH DETOURS, QUIET MOMENTS OF DOUBT, AND A LOT OF REAL > PERFECT ALONG THE WAY.