Remembering the Original Self: You Were Never the Problem

You were never the problem; you were the one who survived.

People love to imagine that healing is about transformation... some dramatic shift into a future version of yourself who is calmer, better regulated, more disciplined, more enlightened, more… something. But that’s not the truth of this work, not the way I’ve learned it. Healing isn’t a makeover. It isn’t self-improvement. It isn’t a performance.

The Humble Pie begins with something far quieter than reinvention. It begins with remembering. Not the kind of remembering that keeps you stuck in the past, but the kind that reconnects you to the self you were before you were trained to disappear.

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There was a version of you, the curious one, the intuitive one, the unashamed one, who knew how to move through the world without apologizing for existing. You can still feel them if you listen closely. They show up in flashes of recognition, in tiny rebellions, in the way your body lights up when something finally feels true. The work isn’t about becoming someone better.

It’s about finding your way back to that original self who was pushed aside long before you ever had words for why.

Most people don’t realize how early the forgetting starts. It happens in the small moments when a child learns that their safety depends on shrinking. When they discover that noticing too much makes other people uncomfortable. When their gifts are treated as liabilities. When their boundaries are interpreted as disrespect. When intuition is replaced with obedience. When the nervous system adjusts itself around the needs of others, because no one ever adjusted theirs around the needs of you.

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By the time you reach adulthood, you’ve learned to carry yourself like a second job. You hold the weight of other people’s emotions with the same familiarity as your own. You assume every collapse must be your fault. You question your softness. You question your strength. You wonder if you’re “the problem” because you were the only one paying attention.

And all the while, the original self is still there, tapping gently, hoping you’ll turn around and remember them.

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That’s what The Humble Pie tracks.

Every step, every entry, every truth-telling moment is really an excavation of the self you were taught to doubt. Even when the writing looks like it’s about trauma, shame, boundaries, grief, masking, sabotage, or the nervous system, the deeper arc is the same: this is the long return to the person you were before fear became your language.

It’s remembering the parts of you that loved freely, trusted instinctively, noticed patterns as clearly as daylight, and didn’t shrink to match someone else’s comfort.

It’s remembering yourself before gaslighting rewrote your perception.

Before emotional erasure taught you to doubt what you felt.

Before religious pressure molded you into something small.

Before motherhood martyrdom convinced you that your worth was measured in sacrifice.

Before toxic marriage dynamics turned your intelligence into a threat.

Before dorsal vagal living numbed you into silence.

Before masking became your default setting.

Before your childhood brilliance was treated as disobedience.

But remembering is only the first half. The second half, the courageous half, is reinhabiting. That means stepping back into your life as the person you were always meant to be, but with the clarity, nervous-system literacy, boundaries, and lived wisdom you’ve earned.

This isn’t regression. It’s reclamation.

There’s a moment in this process when everything you’ve been, the wounded child, the hypervigilant young adult, the exhausted mother, the survivor who learned how to function while dissociated, finally stops competing with the person you are becoming.

They begin to integrate.

They stop fighting for the steering wheel. And you realize that none of them were ever the problem. They were all doing their best to keep you alive.

Healing becomes possible the moment you understand that recovery isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about making room for the truth of who you’ve always been... the person who existed before the world started editing you.

And that person, the one the world worked so hard to silence, is the one who will carry you forward.

Not with perfection. With recognition.

Not with performance. With presence.

Not with apology.

With clarity.

This is the heart of The Humble Pie: remembering yourself so fully that you no longer need to justify your existence to anyone, including the versions of you who learned otherwise.

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Thank you for reading. If this stirred something in you and you’d like to spend more time with this work, you can explore The Humble Pie 12 Steps and learn more about how I support people as a trauma recovery coach.