I have always moved through the world with the default assumption that I am bad. I am always the problem. My voice doesn’t matter and using it won’t make a difference.

This is not what I cognitively believe to be true. I believe that every person is fundamentally good, and that if we were all able to speak and be truly heard we would live in a much better world.

But this is not what my body knows to be true. It is not what my inner child knows to be true.

My experience has taught me the following, and it is what my inner child and body believe at their most foundational levels:

it doesn’t matter if something feels bad, I must do it anyway

if I speak my truth I will embarrass myself

if I point out things I don’t like I will be punished

if something feels bad it’s probably because I’m not good enough

keeping the people around me happy is more important than how I feel

it’s my responsibility to not hurt people’s feelings

it’s my responsibility to protect others from knowing the effect they’ve had on me

if I need approval from others to be ok I’ve got issues

if I can’t say no that’s my problem

I am embarrassing

the things I like are silly and to be laughed at

I must please the authority figures around me in order to be “good”

My weaknesses are unbearable

I am bad

These are the basics of the messages my life has been built on. They came from various places, and many times were stated very clearly and overtly…but eventually they also started coming from places where they didn’t actually exist. Once the foundation was built I started looking at every single interaction I had through these lenses, so even when it wasn’t intended, I was still picking up those messages.

As I’ve been exploring my Chiron placement in my natal chart, these foundational beliefs that I live from every day on an unconscious level have been coming to my attention in a clear way for the first time in my life.

Chiron in the tenth house. The wound of being seen…the wound of reputation… relationship to people in authority…the wound around putting oneself out in the world to be seen…the wound around striving for true success. Then there’s Chiron in Libra, the wound of relationships and relating to people. For me, Chiron in Libra in the 10th house means I’ve almost never actually shown my true self online…or to many people at all. Reading about this placement helped me start to realize just how much I am afraid to show my true self and to be who I actually am because I’m afraid that I will be laughed at. I’m afraid that I will embarrass myself. And the thing is…I might.

Flipping that list around and saying that each one is not true isn’t going to cut it. Because that’s bullshit. My body knows it’s bullshit…it has lived with the effects of those beliefs for 26 years and it KNOWS that on some level those statements have all been true. I WAS punished for pointing out things I didn’t like, I WAS embarrassed when i spoke my truth, it DIDN’T matter how I felt about anything I did it all. Saying they’re not true would mean dismissing my own experience and that would be excessively problematic.

My desire to live authentically and without hiding my true self has never been stronger. But right beside that desire stands the knowledge that doing so would likely bring all my worst fears into reality.

My brain says “bring it on, if people laugh that says more about them than it does about you…” but my heart says “I don’t know if I can take another person telling me how I am wrong, or laughing at me, I learned that being wrong or embarrassing is a life or death situation.”

Maybe the fact that I’m finally realizing and writing this is a sign that I am finally making progress in becoming less bound by these thought patterns. More likely it just means I’ve taken the first step of 10,000 towards that goal.

I don’t want people to feel bad for me. This isn’t a cry for help or a cry to be seen. I’m not even specifically saying all this to make others feel less alone, though that is certainly a positive outcome if it is true.

What I want is to expose my fears to the sunlight so that they aren’t so scary anymore. I desperately want to leave behind these limiting foundational beliefs, and if baring them openly is what it takes to do that, then I will do it. Because I am tired of them.

I’ve done more healing in the past year than probably most of my life…and it wasn’t until today…the day that I’m writing this, that it became clear to me just how hard my foundational beliefs and fears have been working to keep me from being embarrassed, and have simultaneously also kept me from being truly happy.

Here is what I have to say to them.

Thank you. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. I honour your intention and your effort. But I don’t need it anymore. You can rest now. You can let go of it all because I am going to call the shots now, and I’ve decided that being embarrassed, or being wrong, or hurting people’s feelings, does not mean that you are not ok anymore.

In honour of my desire to embrace who I am and share that freely with others, I want to share something that I’ve been working on that feels vulnerable and a little bit terrifying to share because it is so personal.

Many people know that I am very excited and passionate about personality theories including Mbti, Enneagram, and Astrology. I suppose it’s more what these systems can do for self reflection and development that I’m excited about…but anyway…

My passion for this topic has long been a source of projected embarrassment for me. I can hardly help but talk about it with people, and yet after doing so I often feel afraid that I have been over-zealous or embarrassed myself with my exuberance.

I am slowly learning that it is ok for me to be passionate about this, and also to pay less attention to the possibility of embarrassment or criticism.

As a result, I’ve begun the process of embracing this area of interest as my life’s work, through the form of Identity Coaching combined with photography. I want to talk to people about their personalities, show them how unique and amazing they are, and then photograph them embodying that unique and amazing self.

I am building a business called Maia Identity Coaching with the intent of doing just that.

It’s been a couple years now in the making, and the experience has been profound. I didn’t know a career could feel so right. The couple of people I have done this work with so far have shown me just how much I want to do it, and how profound of an experience it can be.

If you want to follow this journey of mine, I would love to have you. It’s all happening over at @maiaidentity