For many years, I knew there was a woman within me who wanted to live a more aligned life. I could feel her.

I knew what mattered to her. I knew what she wanted, and I could imagine the way she would speak, choose, love, create and move through the world.

But knowing her didn’t mean I was living as her.

I had done the ‘inner work’. I had learned, healed, reflected and grown enormously. And I connected with her in my practices, meditations and on my walks.

But inside the constant movement of my daily life, I kept falling back into old, familiar ways of being...

I was always questioning my own knowing because it didn’t fit mainstream ideas, overriding what I needed so the kids got what they needed, and making myself smaller so I couldn’t be judged by people who didn’t care about me anyway.

For a long time, I thought I simply needed to work harder at becoming ‘her’. More tools, better practices, longer meditations. These things helped, but I was still trying to overlay someone else's way onto my own life as the solution.

Until I realised that ‘she’ wasn’t this other, separate version of me that I could only access in certain moments. She was my true Self. The woman I came here to be.

But that didn't mean I could simply let go of the old and step neatly into my truth.

I had to meet myself there, in the limitations my body clung to as safety. The old patterns I'd lived for years, the beliefs I'd inherited... the fear, shame and doubt.

The emotional attachments that had kept me bound to people who weren't safe.

I had to witness, accept and love the woman who experienced all this.