The Room of Self

I thought if I could just fix everything about myself, I’d finally be okay. But it turns out, I was never broken.

Are we broken? Are we damaged goods? Or are we simply humans who’ve had experiences we didn’t know what to do with?

The hidden theme of my journey was independence. But I believed that independence had to be bought. I didn’t think it was something I could create any other way. But I was wrong.

Independence has far more to do with how you feel than it does with your circumstances. Insecurity and people-pleasing taught me that I needed to buy independence — because my relationships would end if I tried to be independent within them.

That wasn’t true. It’s not that the people around me didn’t object a little bit — because they did — it was that I decided I wanted those relationships, and I understood that it meant waiting for people to catch up to me.

If I was honest with myself, I knew not everybody would [catch up], and eventually difficult choices would have to be made. But for now, I could give people the time and space they needed to catch up.

I didn’t have to fight for independence — I just had to stand my ground.
I didn’t have to demand change from anybody — I just had to make new choices.
I didn’t have to get control over the external world — I just had to manage myself within the experience.

I didn’t change the outside world. I changed myself. And the outside world came to meet me.

I wasn’t broken — and neither are you.

There was just a lot of pain in how I showed up, and in how I interpreted my experience. That pain created a distortion in how I saw the world — and how I saw myself within it.

The distortion meant I wasn’t able to see the truth.

It wasn’t their fault I reacted badly — it was my own. From that place, I changed how I showed up. And everything around me changed, too.

Was I broken? No. Just wounded. And I needed to heal.

Healing allowed me to clear up some of the distortion. I was able to see the truth of the pain I had created for myself. I was also able to witness the pain in other people when they lashed out and reacted badly — just like I had in the past.

I’m not perfect. Neither are you. That’s not the expectation or the goal.
Perfection is overrated.

The goal is just to do better than you did the last time. Pay attention to yourself.
See the pain in your own behavior. See how you create pain through your actions and words.

Taking full responsibility for ourselves doesn’t mean we beat ourselves up.
It doesn’t mean we shame ourselves into being something we’re not.
It means we acknowledge the pain — and we take the time to heal it.

Not because we’re broken… but because we’re human.
And because we’re willing to honor ourselves and others by releasing our own pain.

You’re not broken, and there is nothing to fix.
There is only a willingness to take responsibility for ourselves — our words, our actions, our thoughts, and our feelings.

One by one, as we gently heal and transform ourselves into still imperfect, but much less wounded beings, we become more of who we truly are — and less of the pain we’re not.

Much love to all,

Della