The Wildflower Within

What if the person you’ve shown up as most of your life isn’t really who you are? At least not at the core? That was a realization I slowly began coming to as I approached my forties.

It didn’t happen because of one conversation or one life-changing moment. It came after a lifetime of trauma, years of therapy, and learning more about emotional intelligence than I ever imagined I would. Sometimes because life just slapped me in the face with experience, as it tends to do.

But somewhere along the way, I found myself reflecting more deeply than I ever had before. I started asking questions I had spent most of my life avoiding.

Who do I actually want to be?

Who am I showing up as?

And are those two people the same?

The more I reflected, the more I began wondering whether the life I had built was truly aligned with who I was—or whether, somewhere early in life, I had learned that compliance was safer. That being agreeable, accommodating, and easy to manage was the best way to receive the love and attention every child longs for…or simply to survive an environment that already felt chaotic.

I remember about a year and a half ago listening to a podcast that encouraged people to regularly reassess their beliefs. The host asked a series of questions that seemed simple at first, but they lingered with me long after the episode ended.

Where did this belief come from?

Why do I believe it?

Is it actually mine?

Or was it passed down through family, culture, tradition, religion, or fear of what other people might think?

Those questions quietly followed me for months.

The more I sat with them, the more I realized that many of the things I believed about myself—and about how I was supposed to live—weren’t conclusions I had arrived at on my own. They had been handed to me over time by people who loved me, by the culture I grew up in, by religion, by tradition, and by the unspoken expectations that surrounded me.

I was raised in a world that often felt very black and white. Things were either right or wrong. There wasn’t much room for curiosity or complexity, and very little space to ask whether something could be true for one person but not for another.

Religion shaped much of that. So did tradition. So did culture.

I grew up believing I should be conservative. That I should behave a certain way, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, and carry myself in a way that other people would approve of.

Looking back, I don’t feel resentment toward those expectations. They came from people who were doing the best they could with what they knew.

Their expectations quietly became my own. Not because I had consciously chosen them, but because they had been woven into my upbringing for as long as I can remember. They simply became part of who I believed I was.

Even as I got older, I never stopped to ask whether those beliefs were actually mine.

Maybe because I never had the courage to.

And being yourself…

Well, that absolutely requires courage.

It means questioning what you’ve always accepted as truth. It means risking disappointment, misunderstanding, and sometimes even the loss of relationships.

When you grow up believing that compliance is what keeps you safe—emotionally, physically, or mentally—you begin to confuse approval with security. Over time, that way of surviving quietly evolves into something else.

For me, it became perfectionism.

And boy… did it take root.

I spent years believing I needed to be good enough, professional enough, appropriate enough, careful enough—just enough in every possible way to avoid disappointing people. It was exhausting, even when I didn’t realize I was exhausted.

The anxiety wasn’t loud. It was subtle. It sounded like constantly second-guessing myself. Wondering if I had said too much. Worrying whether I had offended someone. Replaying conversations in my head. Questioning every decision after I made it.

When you spend enough years trying to become acceptable, you eventually forget to ask whether you’re actually becoming yourself.

And here’s what I’ve learned.

We are mirrors.

The way we speak to ourselves eventually becomes the way we see everyone else. When we’re constantly measuring ourselves against impossible standards, it’s hard not to unconsciously measure the people around us too.

For a long time, I don’t think I even realized I was unhappy. I just knew I never felt completely at ease. I was constantly anxious and self-critical, and that inner dialogue had a way of spilling into every part of my life.

It is a debilitating way to live.

Then life happened.

I lost my mom.

Relationships changed.

Some people left.

Others disappointed me.

And somewhere in all of that, I found myself sitting alone with the one person I couldn’t run from anymore.

Me.

When enough people leave your life—whether through death, distance, or the natural ending of relationships—you eventually have to decide whether you actually like the person who’s left standing.

That was a hard question.

Because somewhere along the way, I had become really good at being who everyone else needed me to be. I wasn’t so sure I knew who I was anymore.

So I started asking different questions.

What do I enjoy?

What do I believe?

What kind of woman do I want to become?

Not because someone else approved of her.

Not because she fit neatly into someone else’s expectations.

Just because she felt honest.

Little by little, things started changing.

Some of it was internal. I learned to set boundaries without apologizing for them. I stopped feeling responsible for everyone else’s comfort. I became okay with disappointing people if it meant I wasn’t disappointing myself.

Some of it was surprisingly external.

I started having fun with the way I dressed.

That probably sounds silly if you don’t know me.

But it wasn’t really about the clothes.

It was about permission.

Permission to wear the bright earrings.

Permission to buy the boots.

Permission to wear the floral dress instead of wondering whether it was conservative enough, professional enough, or appropriate enough.

Permission to stop asking, “What will people think?” and start asking, “Does this feel like me?”

For most of my life, my clothes reflected who I thought I was supposed to be.

Now they reflect who I actually am.

Not because I think I dress better.

Not because everyone has to like my style.

But because every once in a while, I catch my reflection and smile because I recognize the woman looking back at me.

That may sound small.

It isn’t.

It’s the same reason I laugh louder than I used to.

It’s the reason I write more honestly than I used to.

It’s the reason I dance.

Travel.

Set boundaries.

Speak up.

Love more freely.

The clothes were never the transformation.

They were simply one of the first visible signs that something much deeper had already changed.

That’s what becoming has looked like for me.

Not becoming someone new.

Becoming someone who finally feels at home in her own skin.

I’m still learning.

I’m still questioning beliefs.

I’m still uncovering pieces of myself that spent years hidden beneath perfectionism, fear, and expectations.

Maybe that’s what becoming really is.

Not arriving.

Not finally having it all figured out.

Just having the courage to keep choosing yourself…

Over and over again.

🖤 Keep becoming.

— Julie | The Wildflower Within