Find Your Truth

Success in my quest to find myself!

Image of me taken by Andrew Kirkby

Finding yourself is quite a tough thing to do. I have spent many hours watching videos, reading books, talking to people about how to do it.

I also spent many years looking for myself in all of the socially accepted places.

I wondered, was my identity tied up in what roles I played? Was it as mother, or as a partner, or as a career person? Our role in life is often where we try to find ourselves. I did not find myself there. These were where I applied myself, but it wasn’t answering the who am I question.

Some of the tips were about finding your passion and what you were good at and maybe even monetising it. I looked for myself in my love for photography. I judged, gave talks, created photographic art, mentored people. And I loved it. But it was something I did, not who I was as a person.

I have always felt consumed by life, drowned by it, a victim to its vagaries, and I really needed to find the core me. Without that knowledge, there would be no foundation to build upon, nothing to hold onto, and I expected to spend my older years in just as much of a quagmire as in my youth and my prime.

I just kept feeling like I was missing something. I could write a mission statement for my future. I could place my role in my relationships and I could expand my hobbies and passion to fill my time. I couldn’t help but think, these things didn’t resonate with me fully. In truth, focussing on any one of them felt like it was limiting me.

I began to feel that there was something more fundamental that I was missing. I felt like there was a kernel of something that drove all of me. I began to suspect that there was a core TRUTH that affected everything I am.

I began to look for what part I loved about everything I like doing, be it work, or play. A challenge, when my work is logical and orderly and my play is chaotic and quite the opposite. Then one day, it struck me. There definitely was a thread that infiltrated everything that I liked doing! I found my truth!

I am a creator!

I love to plant annuals and see my garden grow and flower. II love to design and decorate a room at a time on my house to look like a show room. love to design clothes. I love to sew. I love to draw and to paint. When I cook, I love to create new recipes, or to make pretty desserts. I love craft stuff. I love designing looks for photoshoots and creating and making props. At work, I love dessigning and creating systems, and forms and automations. I love writing poems and short stories and battling to write my book/s.

That si who I am. The core me. The times when I am happy and fullfilled are the times I am designing or creating in some way, shape or form.

This doesn’t mean I excel in things I create. It doesn’t mean I don’t need to learn how to do things. It doesn’t mean that skills are sitting there waiting to be tapped into.

No!

What is does mean is that the thing that drives me, and the thing that fullfils me, is not a role, or a direction, or a path to success, or any of that shit we may believe is who we are. What is does mean is that I have found my primal need, my core need and love. That is who I am, and that is my truth.

I am not saying, don’t find your own in a specific role, like being a parent, or in a specific path, like being a doctor, or a business person or an artist. What I am saying is, if you are anything at all like me, you need to understand who you really are, what really drives you, before you can undestand where to go and work out how to get there.