Beneath It All

It begins quietly. You notice yourself saying "no" without explaining. You realize you laughed before looking around to see if anyone would disapprove. You stop apologizing for needing rest. You ask for help without feeling ashamed. You leave the dishes in the sink because your peace matters more than perfection. You begin to understand that some of the things you once called personality were actually survival.

I used to think I was simply independent. Now I know I was afraid to need anyone. I thought I was naturally quiet. Sometimes I was simply afraid my voice would be unwelcome. I believed I was organized. Sometimes I was trying to create order around the chaos I carried inside. I thought I was strong because I never broke. Now I know I was simply terrified of what would happen if I did.

Healing has asked me to question almost everything I believed about myself. Not because those versions of me were false. They weren't. Every one of them served a purpose. Every one of them protected me when I needed protecting.

I don't resent those women. I love them.

The little girl who learned to cook at nine years old because she wanted to make life easier for her family. The young woman who stayed longer than she should have because she believed love meant endurance. The survivor who learned to read the room before she entered it. The woman who worked herself into exhaustion because productivity felt safer than stillness. She wasn't weak. She was doing the best she could with what she knew. But healing has gently whispered something she never imagined. You don't have to keep being her.

Perhaps that is the most beautiful part of healing. It does not ask us to hate the person who survived. It simply gives us permission to become the person survival never allowed us to be. For so much of my life, I became who I thought I had to be. I thought I had to be agreeable. I thought I had to be indispensable. I thought I had to be perfect. I thought I had to be needed. I thought I had to earn love. I thought I had to carry everyone else before I was allowed to care for myself.

But little by little, life has introduced me to another woman. She laughs more easily. She rests without guilt. She trusts people. She speaks honestly. She writes the words she once kept hidden. She gardens. She builds programs that help children find their voices. She sits on the porch with her husband and discovers that ordinary days can feel sacred.

She still cries sometimes. She still wrestles with old lies. She still has healing left to do. But she no longer mistakes those wounds for her identity.

I like her.

Not because she has everything figured out. But because she finally understands something I spent years trying to learn.

We spend so much of life becoming who we think we have to be, only to discover that healing is the slow permission to become who we were created to be.

I don't believe God ever asked me to become smaller. Or quieter. Or harder. Or endlessly self-sacrificing.

I think He simply waited, with extraordinary patience, for me to believe what He knew all along. That beneath every role I carried...

every expectation I tried to meet...

every version of myself I built out of fear...

there was always a woman worth loving.

Not because of what she could endure. Not because of what she could accomplish. Not because of what she could carry.

Simply because she was His.

And perhaps becoming has never really been about becoming someone new.

Perhaps it has always been about finding our way back to the person we were created to be all along.

— Jennifer Rene Wallace