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Be yourself, so the people who are searching for you can actually find you.

There is nothing gained in muting ourselves, shrinking ourselves, editing ourselves into something more palatable, more acceptable, more convenient for others to digest. There is nothing earned in living at 40% volume in a world that needs our full voice.

We think we’re finding safety by softening our edges, by hiding the parts we fear are “too much,” by abandoning pieces of ourselves in order to be held. But what we’re actually doing is building connections that have no hands for the real us to land in.

And then we’re confused when nothing fits.

We call it miscommunication.

We call it tension.

We call it spiritual warfare.

But the truth is simpler and sadder—

We’re fighting to be understood by people who were never even introduced to who we truly are.

You’re arguing so much because you’re speaking from a self that isn’t fully present.

You’re feeling unseen because you’re showing a version of you that isn’t even you.

You’re feeling spiritually drained because your soul keeps trying to stand up, while your fear keeps asking it to sit back down.

You’re feeling “off” because you are misaligned with yourself first, and so everything around you follows that dissonance.

It’s not that the people in your life are bad people.

It’s not that you are inadequate.

It’s not even that these connections are inherently wrong.

It’s that you are trying to be witnessed in a language you do not speak.

You are asking to be loved in a form you cannot breathe inside of.

You are fighting battles that would dissolve the moment you stop betraying yourself for belonging.

The tragedy is not rejection.

It’s abandoning yourself before anyone else even has the chance to choose you.

The tragedy is shaping your life around people who were never meant to house your soul.

The tragedy is silencing a self that was never the problem.

Because the moment you stand in who you actually are—

You stop begging to be recognized.

You start being recognizable.

You stop forcing connection.

You start becoming found.

You stop battling for alignment.

You start being alignment.

And suddenly:

The conversations change.

The connections shift.

The conflicts quiet down.

Not because everyone around you transformed—

but because you finally stopped trying to live in spaces that were too small for your truth.

And that—

that is where peace begins.

Not in changing yourself for the world, but in becoming yourself in spite of it.