The Myth of Getting Back to Yourself

There is a lot of language about getting back to yourself.

Come home to yourself. Remember who you are. Find yourself again. Get back into alignment. Reclaim the woman you were before everything got so hard.

I understand why that language appeals to people.

I’m just not sure it is always true.

Some losses change us.

Not temporarily. Not in a dramatic phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes kind of way. They just alter the landscape enough that the person who exists afterward is not exactly the person who entered.

And that does not automatically mean something has gone wrong.

After grief, I did not always want the same things. My tolerance changed. My relationship with people changed. My energy changed. Things that once mattered deeply became strangely irrelevant. Things I had ignored became much more important.

For a while, it is easy to look at those changes as evidence that you have lost yourself.

But which self are we talking about?

The one before the death?

Before the divorce?

Before the house was gone?

Before the friendship ended?

Before the body changed?

Before you learned something you could not unknow?

Why is that earlier version automatically the authentic one?

Human Design can help me recognize parts of myself that still make sense inside the change. It can offer language for patterns I may already be living. What it cannot do is order me back into a former version of my life just because the chart stayed the same.

That is where I think we have to be careful with all of our maps.

A map can show continuity.

It can also become a weapon if we use it to argue with the person standing in front of us.

Sometimes there is no “getting back.”

Sometimes there is only meeting the person who is here now without immediately assigning her a problem.

Maybe she is not lost.

Maybe she changed.