When I returned from the Who Am I? retreat in Romania, I didn’t come home with a neat answer to that question.
What stayed with me was something much simpler:
I am here.
Since then, I have continued to sit with the question. Not because I think there is one final answer waiting to be found, but because I am beginning to notice the many ways we experience ourselves.
Sometimes we find ourselves in silence.
Sometimes in movement.
And sometimes, we find ourselves in relationship.
The People Who Have Known Us the Longest
Earlier this year, my sisters came from England to visit me.
Looking at a photograph of the three of us together, what strikes me isn’t anything profound. We are simply laughing.
But perhaps there is something profound in that.
There are people in our lives who knew us before many of the roles we eventually took on.
Before careers. Before marriages and children. Before accomplishments and disappointments. Before we learned so many ways of adapting ourselves to the world around us.
When we are with those people, something familiar can sometimes return.
A laugh.
A look.
A way of teasing one another.
A story that has been told a hundred times and is somehow still funny.
For a moment, we aren’t trying to become anything.
We are simply being.
And Yet, Family Can Also Bring Out Our Oldest Patterns
Of course, relationship isn’t always easy.
The people who have known us the longest can sometimes bring out parts of us that we thought we had left behind.
We may suddenly feel like the responsible one again. The quiet one. The difficult one. The peacemaker. The one who takes care of everyone else.
A comment or a familiar tone can affect us much more deeply than we expect.
This doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong.
It may simply mean that relationship has touched an old place in us.
And if we can notice that without immediately judging ourselves or the other person, something interesting becomes possible.
We can ask:
Is this who I am now, or is this an old way I learned to be?
Who Am I With You?
I find myself increasingly interested in this question.
Who am I when I am with you?
Do I become smaller?
Do I become guarded?
Do I feel that I have to perform, please, explain or protect myself?
Or can I relax?
Can I laugh?
Can I disagree?
Can I be quiet?
Can I simply be here?
Our relationships can become mirrors. Not mirrors that tell us who we are, but mirrors that help us notice what happens inside us when we are with another person.
And that noticing can teach us something.
Perhaps We Don’t Need to Become Ourselves
For much of our lives, we are encouraged to become something.
Become successful.
Become confident.
Become stronger.
Become wiser.
Even personal growth can quietly become another project of self-improvement.
But lately, I find myself wondering whether coming home to ourselves is less about adding something and more about noticing what takes us away.
The expectations.
The roles.
The old stories.
The ways we learned to adapt in order to belong.
Perhaps underneath all of that there is something much simpler.
A presence that doesn’t need to prove itself.
A part of us that can laugh freely with people we love.
A quiet awareness that can notice when an old pattern appears without becoming completely lost inside it.
I am not trying to become myself.
I am simply becoming less pulled away from myself.
And sometimes, in an ordinary moment — sitting beside people who have known us for much of our lives, laughing about something we may not even remember later — we catch a glimpse of what that feels like.
We are here.
Together.
And for that moment, perhaps that is enough.
A reflection
Think of someone with whom you feel most able to be yourself.
What happens in your body when you are with them?
What becomes easier?
What do you no longer feel you have to do?
And perhaps most importantly:
What does that relationship help you remember about yourself?
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