The Story They Told You About You Was Never Really About You
There is a voice in your head that has been running in the background for so long you've stopped hearing it as a voice.
Not too much. Not too loud. Stay humble. Get yourself under control. Speed up or fall behind. Put others first.
You didn't make those up. Someone handed them to you. Early, and often, and sometimes without a single word spoken out loud. You absorbed them in tone, in body language, in what got praised and what got shut down. And because you were a smart, perceptive kid, you did exactly what made sense: you built a framework from them. A picture of who to be, what was safe, what you had to do to be loved and accepted.
That framework kept you afloat. For a long time, it worked.
The problem is that most of us are still living inside this structure designed for a life that does not empower you driven by a voice that was never yours to begin with.
Built to Protect, Not to Empower
Those early messages weren't random. They came from caregivers and environments that were doing their best to keep you safe. The people who raised you were working from their own frameworks, shaped by their own messages, passed down through their own generations of unquestioned beliefs.
So they told you things like:
Stay humble. Don't draw too much attention to yourself.
Get yourself under control.
Speed up or fall behind.
Be good. Put others first.
Maybe those were said out loud? Or maybe you just knew? Either way, you took them in and used them to build your life. And for a long time, they worked. They helped you navigate, survive, belong. Credit where it is due: those messages got you through.
But here’s the proverbial rub: the people who handed you those stories were working from their own fear, their own conditioning, their own unexamined beliefs. That message was a reflection of them. It was not a verdict on you. It was never about you.
The Story Became the Background Noise
The tricky thing about the messages we carry is that they don't stay loud. Over time, they become the background noise of our lives. They quietly shape how we think, how we speak to ourselves, how we walk into a room or step back from an opportunity. They feel so familiar that we stop questioning whether they're true.
To be perfectly clear - Familiar is not the same as true.
A story can feel completely real, completely you, and still be borrowed. Still be something handed to you by someone who was doing their best but didn't have the full picture.
The question worth asking is not whether the story feels true. The question to ask is “Is it still serving me?”
Three Questions Worth Sitting With
This is where reclamation begins. Not in a dramatic overhaul, but in a pause. Long enough to ask:
Whose voice is that in my head?
Is this belief helping me, or just familiar?
Is this truth, or is it a story I've never thought to question?
These are not comfortable questions. They require you to look at things you've taken for granted, including some things that have felt like you even if it was borrowed and never actually yours.
Reclaiming your story doesn't mean erasing where it came from. It means honoring what those messages did for you in the past, while making a conscious choice about what gets to come with you into your future.
You Get to Write What Comes Next
As a child, you didn't have a choice about what you absorbed. You were building with the materials you were given. But you are not a child anymore.
You get to ask the questions you couldn't ask then. You get to look at the beliefs driving your patterns and decide which ones still belong to you. You get to put down what was never yours to carry.
That is not a small thing. For a lot of women I work with, it is the thing. The moment they realize the voice telling them they are too much, not enough, or not ready wasn't their voice at all. It belonged to someone else. And they don't have to keep holding it.
The patterns you keep running into did not start with you. But the decision to examine them, question them, and rewrite them? That one is entirely yours.
What's one message you received early on that you're still working to unlearn? I'd love to hear it.
Journal Prompts
What messages did you receive growing up about who or how you should be? What messages did you receive about who and how you shouldn't be?
How were those messages delivered? Not just the words, but the tone, the look, the silence.
Did they feel like guidance or like rules you didn't get a vote on?
When you took those messages in, what did they make you believe about yourself?
What new messages would you like to replace these messages with that empower you to be who you fully are and are meant to be?
