Some souls arrive at a season that many people never consciously reach, a season where the version of themselves they spent a lifetime shapeshifting to be acceptable in the world, suddenly begins to feel strangely foreign, almost as if they have outgrown the very skin they worked so hard to perfect.

It is a season where all the small behaviours they adopted to be perceived as beautiful, likeable or worthy no longer feel like expressions of Self but pieces of quiet armour, and something inside them begins to whisper that perhaps what they have been calling beauty has actually been a disguise for belonging.

If you are reading this, perhaps you are one of those rare souls who can feel the beginnings of a gentle rebellion rising within you, not against the world or the people in it, but against the ways you have abandoned yourself to belong. It is an insistent remembering of the person who breathes underneath all your adaptations, the person who has been patiently waiting for you to feel safe enough to return.

This moment, when your adaptations loosen and your authenticity begins to stir awake again, is what I call the True Self Threshold. It is the luminous meeting point between the beauty you crafted to be accepted and the beauty that emerges when you finally feel free enough to be exactly as you are.

And it is here, at this very threshold, where Joanna’s story begins...

      Joanna sat barefoot in her backyard, the late afternoon sun weaving warm ribbons of gold through the tall gum trees above her. It was the day before her fortieth birthday, and although she had expected to feel nostalgic or reflective, she instead felt a quiet stirring in her chest, a sense of standing in the doorway of a life she had circled many times but never fully stepped into.

She had a glossy fashion magazine open across her lap, a relic from the younger version of herself who used to study every page as if it held the secret to belonging. Its headline read How to Glow at Any Age, and the words made her smile, though the smile held far more ache than amusement. Joanna had spent most of her life trying to glow in ways the world approved of, ways that demanded she tidy herself, tame herself, soften herself, and hide any evidence that she was a human being with lines and stories and experiences etched into her skin.

She turned the page and felt something strengthen inside her, not harshly, but with the grounded certainty that arrives when truth finally catches up to you. The women in the photos were flawless, smooth, polished, curated to appear ageless and perfectly still, and although they were beautiful, their beauty did not move Joanna. It did not ignite warmth or recognition or aliveness in her. Instead, it felt thin and distant, like an image shaped for approval rather than an expression shaped from authenticity.

A thought rose quietly in her mind, as though it had been waiting years for her to be ready to hear it. What if I was never meant to filter myself to be beautiful. What if I was meant to feel safe enough to express the beauty I already am.

The moment she thought it, her chest loosened and then expanded as though a truth she had swallowed long ago had finally returned to where it belonged. Suddenly memories began rising, not to wound her but to guide her back to the exact moment she had first learned to leave her Self.

She remembered being twelve, sitting cross legged on the floor with her mother’s magazines spread around her like a shrine to an unattainable ideal. She remembered running her fingers across the faces of women who seemed impossibly smooth and controlled, and she remembered believing that flawless meant loved, loved meant safe, and safe meant agreeable.

She remembered the boy in the canteen line who laughed at her freckles and told her they made her look dirty, and how she laughed along with him while her body silently absorbed the shame. Later that night she stood under the harsh bathroom light brushing powder over the constellations on her cheeks, trying to erase all evidence of her flaws.

She remembered being told her laugh was too loud, so she trained herself to shrink her joy into something quieter and more acceptable. She remembered watching the women around her diminish their edges, smooth their intensity, and silence their truth so they could be easier to love.

Piece by piece she learned to adapt, sanding down every part of her Self that felt too much, too expressive, too emotional, too honest, too alive. She did not know then that she was trading her natural beauty for a borrowed version of safety.

Now, sitting in her garden two decades later with sunlight warming the freckles she once hid, she felt those memories return with a tenderness she had never offered herself before. Somewhere along the way she had mistaken perfection for beauty, tightness for youth, symmetry for worthiness, and Self erasure for belonging. She had mistaken glowing for performing and she had forgotten that her body was not designed to be a polished exhibit but a living landscape of experience, vitality and story. She had forgotten that the marks and lines and signs of a life lived were not evidence of decline but evidence of aliveness.

As she looked at the magazine again, she felt something shift in her perception so distinctly that she almost laughed. The perfection on the page looked lifeless now, not aspirational. She realised, with a sudden flash of recognition, that she had never actually wanted to look flawless. What she had always truly wanted was to feel free.

Real beauty, she now understood, was not the absence of age or texture or evidence of a life lived. Real beauty was the wildness of a laugh that comes from the belly, the softness that grows around the eyes from years of loving people deeply, the lines etched across the forehead from a thousand curious questions, the shape of a body that has carried stories and seasons and sorrow and joy.

Real beauty was the glow that rose from feeling safe enough to fully engage with life. It was super natural beauty, the kind that comes from a soul fully inhabiting its human form.

She realised she liked the way her freckles shone as constellations of her character, how her wild and bright laugh made normal moments come alive. She honoured her curves and lines and small imperfections as proof that she had lived and held deep compassion for her body, with all its texture and truth, as the miracle it truly was.

And suddenly she felt it, that unmistakable sensation of standing at a threshold, the boundary between the self she had been adapting into and the Self she was finally ready to reclaim. She placed the magazine gently on the grass beside her, closed her eyes and let the sunlight travel across her skin, feeling its warmth not as something she needed to earn but as something she deserved simply because she existed. A steady warmth spread through her chest, and she felt herself returning, not to a new version of herself, but to the one who had always been waiting beneath the noise.

“This is my season,” she whispered, a genuine soul-led smile awakening across her face. “The season of my True Self.”

When she opened her eyes the garden looked exactly the same, but she felt entirely different. She knew she would no longer shape her beauty through fear or compliance. She would shape it through authenticity, presence, and deep reverence for the incredible body she lived in. She would let her truth be seen, not to set herself apart from others but to stand among them with courage and warmth. She would glow not because she was polished, but because she was fully alive.

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

YOUR TRUE SELF REALISATIONS

Take a slow, steady breath, and let these reflections meet the part of you that has been abandoning its needs for belonging.

• Is there a part of you that feels it must abandon its needs to stay accepted, and can you understand why it learned that.
• Would you be willing to offer that part compassion and reassurance for all it has carried.
• If authenticity and connection could co-exist, what might become possible for you.
• Where might your natural beauty or natural truth be ready to return.
• What would shift in your life if you honoured what is real within you instead of polishing what is acceptable.

Let these reflections land gently. This is not a test, but an invitation.

You are standing at your own True Self Threshold, and when you feel ready to learn the rhythm that steadies you through every threshold moment, I will be honoured to guide you inside The True Self Quest.