A Return to Myself

“‘Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” –Emily McDowell

When I left my corporate career without a plan, I had lost myself within my career identity. That career no longer fit within the life I wanted as a new mother. But I didn’t yet see what would.

I had gotten caught up in what everyone else saw for my career potential for so long, that I no longer knew what would be meaningful to me.

And, I had been in and out of workplace burnout cycles for years.

Beneath the surface, I could sense there was something so deeply missing from my life. I felt disconnected from my true self, from my soul.

At the time, I couldn’t fully access my creativity. Writing creativity felt dry and dull. I thought I was only “good” at business writing any longer. So many other creative interests I loved had diminished.

I didn’t know it was all connected. I mistakenly believed that creativity fades in adulthood. I didn’t notice at first when a light inside of me had faded along with it.

This is a story of remembering who I truly am and returning to myself.

A Remembering

There were so many moments when I remembered who I had been before I felt lost. I recalled times I was in college and my early 20s, when I was so full of life. I had come into myself then. It was the first time in my adult life where I felt the most like myself.

Experiencing and expressing creativity and art were central to my life then.

Looking back, it’s not surprising that I met my husband at that time of my life.

Right before I started graduate school, I went on a retreat where I took a poetry class, my first attempt at poetry. It connected with something deep in me. In the last class, we got an assignment in pairs: we would each be given a turn to speak and the other person would write a poem about what they shared. Though I felt like I rambled, I received such a beautiful poem. There was a line from the poem that has stayed with me since: “If you write, then the rest will follow.”

While the class sparked something in me, I wasn’t able to keep up a writing practice on my own. It was, unfortunately, my last writing program for thirteen years.

Remembering this time in my life, I wondered: what had happened to that woman? I wanted to bring more of that woman back.

So, what happened? I had done what I was supposed to do as an adult. I over focused on my career after getting my MBA. I went all in. I had a good and practical career working at a Talent Development department, within a Corporate HR function, at a company I was so passionate about. I strongly believed in and aligned with the company culture. I felt my contribution was making a positive impact. I loved so many aspects. I called it my “dream job.” I put most of my time and attention towards growing in my career.

While it was fulfilling, I looked to that career to fulfill me in more ways than it was possible for it to.

Overtime, as my responsibilities and the demands continued to increase, I started to drown in career overwhelm. There was more and more work than what I could keep up with — and much of it was draining and depleting. Coinciding with less creativity in my life, much less.

For some time before I left, I tried to do what I could to support my wellbeing. Though it helped manage the burnout, the changes I made weren’t enough for me to renew.

The Road to Return

When I made the decision to leave, I began to reconnect with myself and to what was most important in my life and career. I committed to find a different way to live than in continuous burnout cycles. A way with wellbeing at the center. And, I slowly began to renew. I learned it takes a long time to recover from burnout.

I designed my own consulting business, where I am fortunate to make a meaningful career contribution, in a way that works for my life. But I sensed more of me was still buried.

I had wanted to come back to write creatively more regularly for some time. But it stayed sporadic. When things I had counted on in my life crumbled at the start of the pandemic, something changed in me quite suddenly. I had a toddler at home with no childcare, most of my consulting business fell apart within two weeks, and what called to me was to write.

It was a remembering, a resurfacing, of a calling that had come and gone for years of my life. That I would try to pick up but then tuck away again. Leaving it to “someday.” This time, while it made no practical sense, it felt different. This time, it was so intense.

And I listened. It was the listening that changed everything.

I made a commitment to work through an online self-paced creative writing course I had previously purchased.

Over time as I continued to rejuvenate, the most amazing reemergence occurred: my full creativity burst forth into the light.

When I reconnected to the part of me where my creativity thrives, my heart began to sing. My whole being lit up. I felt fully at home with myself.

And I finally understood what had been missing.

It had been there in wisdom of the poem I received sixteen years ago: “If you write, then the rest will follow.”

I now know, to live life fully, I must be able to access my creativity. Which I can’t do when I’m burned out.

Rediscovering my buried creativity, especially writing, has been the most unexpected and beautiful return to myself.

The greatest gift I’ve given myself is that I am returning to what’s true to me.