Hey there, beautiful ones. Let’s talk about the stories we tell — because there isn’t just one story following you around in this life. There are many. Layered ones. Old ones. Stories that were written before you ever had a say, and ones you’ve been quietly rewriting without even realizing it. And some of them, if we’re being honest, have been holding you back for far too long.
So let’s sit with this for a moment. Let’s look at where these stories came from, what they’ve cost us, and what it means to finally pick up the pen and write something new.
In the Beginning…
Before you took your first breath, a story was already being written about you.
Your parents — with love, with fear, with hope, with their own unhealed wounds — were already imagining who you would be. What you would do. How far you would go. Whether they spoke it out loud or simply held it quietly in their expectations, they had already begun drafting the outline of your life before you arrived to live it.
And then you were born, and the world got involved.
Family, religion, culture, society — all of it came rushing in with its own set of chapters already written. You would be this kind of person. You would follow this path. You would fit into this box, carry this role, fulfill this purpose. None of it was discussed with you. None of it asked for your input. The story of your life began as a collaborative project between everyone except the one person it actually belonged to.
That is not a small thing. That is the foundation so many of us have been standing on without ever stopping to examine what it’s made of.
The Compliant and the Rebellious
As we grew, most of us landed in one of two camps — and if you look back honestly, you’ll recognize yourself in one of them.
Some of us became compliant. We learned early that acceptance came with obedience, that love was conditional on performance, and so we shaped ourselves accordingly. We did what we were told, became what was expected, and earned our praise by making ourselves easy to manage. It felt like safety. It felt like belonging. But somewhere underneath all that compliance, the truest parts of us were quietly going unmet.
And then there were those of us who became rebellious.
I was that child. Always asking the uncomfortable questions. Refusing to do things simply because I was told to. Making it difficult, they said. Being a problem, they said. My sisters took the other path — they were the compliant ones, the easy ones, the ones who were fawned over at home, at church, at school. And I was the black sheep. Labeled difficult before I was old enough to understand what that word would cost me.
Here’s what I want you to hear: neither path was wrong. The compliant child was trying to survive just as much as the rebellious one. We were all just children doing the best we could inside stories we hadn’t chosen. But those labels — difficult, perfect, broken, golden, too much, not enough — they have a way of sticking. And if we don’t do something about them, they follow us right out of childhood and into the rest of our lives.
What We Learn to Tell Ourselves
This is where it gets tender, beautiful ones.
The stories other people started about us have a way of becoming the stories we tell ourselves. Slowly, without meaning to, we absorb their words. We internalize their perceptions. We begin to believe that the label someone else put on us is actually a reflection of who we are.
Unlovable. Difficult. Perfect. Broken. Too sensitive. Too loud. Not smart enough. Not good enough. These were never truths — they were observations filtered through someone else’s limitations, someone else’s fears, someone else’s unfinished business. The people who labeled us were often just trying to make sense of something they didn’t understand, or simply trying to keep us in a shape that was convenient for them.
But we believed it anyway. And in believing it, we began to live it.
We started playing roles — either performing the version of ourselves that others approved of, or pushing back against it just to prove a point. And either way, the truest, most authentic version of who we actually are got left behind. Sitting quietly in the corner of our own psyche, waiting for us to come back and claim it.
Time to Tell a New Story
Here is what I need you to know: just because a story has followed you this far does not mean you are obligated to carry it any further.
You are not the labels that were placed on you. You are not the role you were handed. You are not the sum of other people’s perceptions, no matter how many years you’ve been living as if you were.
You are allowed to evolve. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to look at the stories that have been running in the background of your life and decide — with full authority — which ones stay and which ones go.
You are the author of this life. Not your parents. Not your family. Not the church, the school, or the society that thought it knew exactly who you were supposed to be. You.
And the most powerful story you will ever tell is the one where you finally decide to become yourself.
I believe in you. And as always, I love you.
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