Over the past several years, I’ve been doing the work of looking back at who I used to be and how I became who I am now. It hasn’t been a quick process or a smooth one, but it’s been necessary. Somewhere along the way, I realized that many of the beliefs I carried as truth were not mine to begin with. So, I started the process of reconnecting with my younger self — the part of me who believed in possibilities before life and loss reshaped how I saw the world.
As a child, I was bold in ways that I didn’t fully appreciate until adulthood. I grew up in a culture where you earned every step forward. Expectations were high, and I met them. I excelled in school, sports, and most of what I touched. Not because anyone pushed me, but because I naturally believed I could. I was confident, curious, and unafraid of hard work.
Some of my earliest responsibilities taught me more about life than anything that came later. At nine years old, I would walk two hours with my mother and grandfather in the village to gather firewood and vegetables. I learned how to balance heavy bundles on my head, how to keep pace with adults, and how my small contributions mattered to our household. My parents encouraged me to explore, to be independent, and to think for myself. I even found small ways to earn my own money as a child — not for necessity, but because it gave me pride. I didn’t know it at the time, but these experiences were shaping a sense of capability and resilience that would carry me farther than I could imagine.
But life changed abruptly when I lost my parents and brother at twelve.
That loss didn’t just remove the people I loved. It stripped away the environment that understood me. The independence that once made me special became something that others misunderstood. Instead of being viewed as capable, I was often seen as difficult. Instead of being encouraged, I was pressured to conform. I was placed in spaces that did not honor who I was or what I had survived. And slowly, without realizing it, I adopted new beliefs about myself — beliefs formed out of grief, confusion, and the desire to avoid conflict in environments that couldn’t hold my truth.
I went from being a confident child to a teenager who questioned everything about herself.
I doubted my intelligence.
I questioned my worth.
I stopped believing I had the right to dream big.
These thoughts weren’t born from failure — they were born from being placed in systems and households that didn’t know what to do with a child carrying trauma.
Even as I grew older, the impact of those years stayed with me. I became someone who feared being “too much” or “too different.” I learned to shrink myself to keep the peace. I learned that people preferred when I stayed quiet about the things that shaped me. I learned that being strong could be perceived as threatening, and being independent could be misunderstood as disrespect.
Those beliefs pushed me into a mindset of survival. I didn’t aim for the things I once believed I could achieve. Instead, I focused on getting through each day, often without direction. I didn’t realize it then, but I was operating from a place of pain disguised as humility.
In my early adulthood, I found myself turning to service as my way of coping. I traveled, volunteered, and poured into people who carried their own losses. Being in service to others gave me purpose and pulled me out of my own head. But it also became a form of escape. As long as I was helping others, I didn’t have to sit with my own story or acknowledge the parts of me that needed attention.
The work I did around the world was meaningful, but internally, I treated my own achievements as if they were accidents — isolated moments rather than evidence of a deeper calling. I didn’t recognize my strength; I only recognized my exhaustion.
My turning point came in Malawi.
It wasn’t a dramatic moment — it was subtle, the way truth sometimes arrives.
I spent time with people who carried far more hardship than I ever imagined. And yet, they radiated a type of inner resilience and gratitude that I couldn’t ignore. They moved through life with a grounded joy that didn’t rely on external circumstances. Their way of living forced me to reflect on my own choices, my own beliefs, and the layers of grief I had refused to acknowledge.
They showed me something I didn’t expect:
that healing isn’t about avoiding pain — it’s about learning to live with it without letting it define you.
Their presence reminded me of who I used to be — not because our lives were the same, but because their resilience mirrored the resilience I had buried under years of silence and self-doubt.
The truth is, I spent years caring for others because it was easier than caring for myself. My story was heavy, and I didn’t know how to face it. So I built emotional walls and convinced myself I was fine. In reality, I was disconnected from the younger version of me who was brave, curious, and capable. I thought I was protecting myself by distancing from her, but I was only deepening the wound.
Eventually, I had to confront the narrative I carried for nearly fifteen years — the narrative that said I was not enough, that my dreams were unrealistic, and that my voice did not matter. These were not truths; they were survival responses.
My healing began when I finally acknowledged that.
Reconnecting with my inner child didn’t happen overnight. It happened through reflection, therapy, and moments of unexpected clarity. It happened through conversations with myself that I had avoided for years. And it happened through allowing myself to remember the version of me that existed before trauma taught me to doubt everything.
There was a moment — a seemingly ordinary moment — when the realization hit me. I was walking outside, overwhelmed by everything I had been carrying, and something inside me felt lighter for the first time in years. It was as if my younger self finally got through to me, reminding me that the joy and purpose I had been searching for outwardly was always within me.
I smiled — a real, unfiltered smile — and I couldn’t stop. A stranger even asked if I was okay, because the joy was so sudden and visible. But in that moment, I was more than okay. I was reconnecting with the part of me that had been waiting to be acknowledged.
What I discovered is that healing rarely arrives the way we expect. Sometimes it shows up quietly. Sometimes it interrupts your day. Sometimes it reveals that the person you needed to become was always inside you — simply buried under years of unprocessed grief and inherited beliefs.
By reconnecting with my inner child, I began to rebuild my sense of self. I remembered the girl who believed she could do anything. I remembered the child who survived circumstances many adults never face. I remembered the resilience that was always there — not because I earned it, but because it was part of me.
My scars no longer represent brokenness; they represent endurance.
They represent every moment I chose to keep going when the world gave me every reason to stop.
They represent the foundation of the work I do today.
My journey now is about living authentically, honoring the child who survived, and helping others reconnect with the parts of themselves they were taught to silence. When we return to our inner child, we don’t become childish — we become whole. We remember what was stolen, what was forgotten, and what is still possible.
Reconnecting with my inner child didn’t erase my grief — it transformed my relationship to it. It helped me see myself clearly again. It helped me reclaim belief, joy, identity, and purpose.
And now, I invite you to consider your own story.
Not with pressure.
Not with urgency.
But with curiosity.
Who were you before you learned to doubt yourself?
What did you believe about life before grief reshaped your world?
What part of you is still waiting to be acknowledged?
Your inner child isn’t asking you to return to the past.
They’re asking you to remember who you were before the world told you to be someone else.
And reconnecting with that truth may be the beginning of a new chapter — one defined not by survival, but by possibility.
With love,
Epiphany
