The Season Of The True Self

Some souls reach a season that others never do. A season when the carefully constructed world you once worked so hard to belong to begins to feel strangely foreign. A season when the voices you obeyed for so long no longer sound like truth. A season when you finally see, that the world you tried so hard to fit into and please, never truly understood raw beauty, or vitality, or the deeper intelligence of life itself.

If you are reading this, perhaps you are one of those rare souls. One of the few who can feel the quiet rebellion rising inside you. One of the few whose pain has begun to whisper, this way of living was never my truth.

This is the season when something inside you begins to turn toward home. Not to defy the world or reject others, but to learn how to express the truth of who you are in a way that opens you, and everyone around you, to more honest connection.

And this is the season where our story begins…

          Joanna sat barefoot in her backyard, the soft light of late afternoon spilling through the gum trees in warm golden ribbons. It was the day before her fortieth birthday. She had expected nostalgia or reflection, but instead she felt a stirring deep in her chest, a sense of standing at a threshold she had been circling for years.

The air carried the sweet smell of jasmine and the faint sound of her neighbour’s laughter through the fence. In her lap lay a glossy fashion magazine opened to an article titled How to Glow at Any Age. The headline made her smile, though the smile held more ache than amusement. She knew this ache well: the ache of someone who had spent her life trying to glow according to rules that were never her own.

She turned the page and something tightened inside her.

The women gazing back at her were flawless, smooth, composed, and curated into stillness. A filtered beauty, refined so neatly that nothing raw or alive remained. And as she studied their quiet perfection, she realised something unexpected: they were beautiful, yes, but their beauty evoked nothing real in her. It stirred no warmth, no recognition, no electricity. It lacked the spark, the wildness, the heartbeat she always felt in beauty that was whole and unedited.

A thought rose in her, steady and unmistakable: What if I was never meant to filter myself at all, but to express and evoke the rawness of everything I am?

The moment she thought it, something in her chest loosened, as though a truth she had swallowed long ago had finally found its way back to her.

The thought opened a door inside her, and memories began to pour through.

She was twelve years old, sitting on her bedroom floor with her mother’s magazines spread around her like a glossy paper shrine to perfection. She traced the smooth, symmetrical faces with her fingertips, mesmerised by how flawless they appeared, how worthy, how admired, how safely contained.

To her young mind, flawless meant beautiful.
Beautiful meant acceptable.
Acceptable meant safe.
And safety meant belonging… even if it came at the cost of herself.

She remembered looking into the mirror and, for the first time, seeing not her Self but everything she believed was not 'good enough'.

She remembered the boy in the canteen line pointing at her freckles and saying, Your freckles make you look dirty. She laughed with everyone else, pretending it didn’t matter. But later, beneath the bathroom light, she brushed concealer powder over her freckles until they disappeared. She believed hiding them made her more acceptable, more liked, more allowed.

She remembered being scolded for laughing too loudly. Her laugh had always been wild and bright, the sound of a spirit uncontained. But after that reprimand, she practised a quieter laugh, a neater joy.

She remembered being corrected for her questions, her opinions, her curiosity. Her honesty made people uncomfortable, and so she learned to tuck her truth into the corners of her mind.

And she remembered the women around her; women who clipped their edges for the comfort of others. Women who dimmed their aliveness to fit into the frame. Women who learned to be admired rather than felt.

All these moments wove themselves into an unspoken lesson: to be accepted, you must reduce yourself.

Piece by piece, she hid the parts of herself that were vibrant, expressive, or different, believing this was the only way to stay loved, safe, included.

Now, sitting barefoot in her garden, she felt those memories rise with the slow certainty of a tide returning to shore. Not to wound her, and not to shame her, but to show her what was finally hers to reclaim, not as rebellion, but as reconnection.

Because somewhere along the way, she had mistaken silence for kindness.
Compliance for cooperation.
Self-erasure for harmony.

But real connection was never born from who she pretended to be.
It could only live in who she truly was.

She looked back down at the magazine.

Their filtered perfection didn’t feel aspirational anymore, It felt… limited. Quiet in a way that lacked life and beautiful in a way that lacked truth.

For the first time, Joanna saw how the world had mistaken unnatural for beauty, suppression for truth, and sameness for worth. How she herself had mistaken the removal of her natural traits as self-improvement rather than self-diminishment.

And then she realised that real beauty had never lived in the flawlessness she once longed for. Real beauty had always lived in the very parts she had been taught to hide:

Her freckles were constellations alive with character.

Her laugh was wild and bright, a sound that invites others to unmask.

Her questions were doorways to deeper conversations.

Her stubborn spark was the fire that leads to richer connection.

What she had been taught to erase had always been the most beautiful thing about her. What she softened to belong had always been her doorway to deeper belonging, and what she muted to keep others comfortable had always been the very thing that could create true intimacy.

She saw now that she had never been lacking.
She had simply been super natural in a world that worshipped the superficial.

A breath escaped her chest, soft and full of recognition and something in her settled into truth.

She placed the magazine gently in the grass beside her, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply, as though returning to herself after decades of exile. Warmth spread through her body, steady and grounded. She felt her presence rise within her: unmistakable, unfiltered, relational, real.

This is my season, she whispered. The season of my True Self.

As the words landed, she felt the shift.
A decision.
A return.
A remembering.

She knew she would no longer shape herself according to inherited rules or inherited fears. But she also knew this season was not about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It was not about pushing people away, nor about standing apart.

It was about learning how to express her truth in a way that invites others closer.
How to use her voice with clarity and kindness.
How to let her real laugh spark real connection.
How to be honest without being sharp, strong without being hard, soft without being small.

She would live from the inside out now.
Unfiltered. Unmasked. Unafraid of being seen.

She would honour what was real.
She would allow her own rhythm to lead, and she would finally understand that her authenticity could increase connection, not lessen it.

Joanna opened her eyes.

The garden looked the same, but felt entirely new: more vivid, more honest, more alive.

Something in her had awakened, and she knew with certainty she would not go back to sleep.

This was her season.
The Year of Her True Self.

The End.

Reader’s Realisations

Maybe you recognise yourself in Joanna’s story. Maybe you too have spent years perfecting or performing or proving yourself worthy of love. Maybe you have lived with the quiet exhaustion of filtering out the parts of you that are most alive. But what if those very parts, the ones you were taught to hide, are where your magic has been waiting.

Take a moment and ask yourself:

• What am I ready to include instead of hide.
• What truth within me is ready to rise.
• What would it feel like to let my natural glow return without apology.

This is your season to vitalise who you already are.
To let your True Self shine through every ordinary moment.

And when you are ready to master your own True Self Rhythm, steady, sovereign and free, I will be honoured to guide you inside The True Self Quest.