Who Do You Think You Are?

Today is my birthday.

Birthdays have a way of inviting reflection, and as I look back on this past year, I realize it changed my life more than any other in recent memory.

It all began last spring in Amsterdam.

My sister and I took part in a ritual inspired by a traditional sweat lodge. Sitting quietly, surrounded by the heat of the fire, the steam, and the steady rhythm of native drumming, it happened. Now, I’m not someone who remembers dreams or has visions. In fact, nothing like what I’m about to tell you had ever happened to me before… In that moment, a Bald Eagle appeared. Right in front of me—majestic with its enormous wingspan. I climbed onto its wings and soared, feeling nothing but freedom. Gone was my fear of heights. Just pure enjoyment. Then, just as suddenly, a wasp appeared directly in front of me. It startled me at first, but it felt purposeful. It had meaning.

As we walked outside afterward, and before I researched the possible explanation of this vision, I turned to my sister and said, almost without thinking:

"It's time to write my book."

To this day, I can't explain why I instinctively connected that vision to writing my memoir. I simply knew it was time. It was time to start putting my life’s journey onto paper.

At the time, I thought writing my memoir would simply be about putting experiences into words. But I couldn't have been more wrong.

The process of writing my manuscript The Woman I Had to Find asked something much greater of me. It asked me to stop minimizing and downplaying my past. And to finally say something out loud that I had never truly allowed myself to say publicly. The moment came when I had to introduce myself in a peer support group for mental health coaches. My turn came up… my heart was beating so loud, I thought everybody could hear it… then I said it, out loud:

I am a survivor of abuse.

There was no holding back the emotions that overtook me, nor the stream of tears down my cheeks. That first time changed me.

For years, I believed those words would define me if I spoke them. Instead, quite the opposite happened. The moment I stopped hiding my experiences with complex trauma and abuse, they stopped carrying power over me. It’s like I am reclaiming a part of myself. And it is hugely liberating.

Like many survivors, I hadn't exactly kept my past a secret. I simply didn't talk about it. It belonged to another lifetime, or so I told myself. Why revisit something so painful? Why rock the boat?

But healing, and that’s what writing about my past has done, has a curious way of asking us to acknowledge what we’ve spent years trying to outgrow. 

A quote by Charles Cooley found me recently: 

I am not who I think I am. 

I am not who you think I am. 

I am who I think you think I am.

It stopped me in my tracks. That’s it. “I am who I think you think I am.” For much of my life, I unconsciously shaped myself around who I believed other people needed me to be. I wasn’t pretending—I was simply protecting myself. My default response to a perceived threat is to fawn. To please. To appease.

Writing changed that. Putting words to painful memories required me to process the emotions I had carried for so long. In doing so, I found something I never expected: relief.

Once I could let go of the shame, I found freedom. Here I am… all of me. No drama, just truth. My truth.

This past year, I’ve stopped trying to prove my worth or live up to expectations I thought others had of me. I’ve started listening inward instead. Really listening. I’ve given myself the gift of being seen for who I really am. And it feels like I’m finally taking up the space that I needed. Gone is the fear. Gone is the shame. If anything, I feel free.

While this is my story, I know it isn't only mine. Millions of women carry experiences they've never fully spoken about — because silence has always felt safer than vulnerability. Yet every time one of us speaks honestly, we make it just a little easier for someone else to do the same.

So today, on my birthday, I'm sharing this — not because I have all the answers. But because I know what it costs to spend years being who you think you're supposed to be.

The journey continues. And for the first time, I’m walking it as myself.

I am becoming the woman who was always possible.

My hope is that you, too, discover she has been waiting for you all along.

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