What if our greatest gifts…lie in the parts of ourselves we reject?

👉 Like many on the self-development path, I’ve spent years striving to become the 'best' version of myself.

💡 But here’s what I hadn’t realised:

Even that version was still a performance.
Another curated identity.
One that looked real - but quietly rejected the parts of me that didn’t fit the narrative.

I had convinced myself that I needed to leave behind the messier bits - the “shadow” parts.

But what if, even in those shadow parts there lies real power?

Example:

Grewing up, I was the master chameleon - spending many years of my life hiding parts of myself away to ‘fit in’ and conform.
I am not proud of this part of myself because it felt inauthentic and disconnected me from myself.
But shining a light on it, it also sharpened my intuition.
It taught me how to read a room.
To sense what was unspoken.
To be discerning.

Skills that, looking back, have become incredibly valuable - both personally and professionally.

There’s wisdom in the shadow.
There are superpowers in the parts we try to hide.
If we just take the time to really look.

And knowing this allows us to grow with these parts rather than reject them.

💡 And this was a lightbulb moment for me:

✨Authenticity isn’t a destination.
It’s not about becoming someone new.
It’s not about rejection of the old.
It's not about either/or.

It's about integration.
It's about yes/and.
It’s about a daily calibration. ✨

And it's not about arriving at a finished 'self'. Like a baby learning to walk - we can give ourselves permission to wobble, to fall, to readjust as we experiment with bringing more of our full selves and our superpowers into this world.

Because your real power?
Isn’t in reinventing yourself.
It’s in reclaiming all of who you are - light, shadow and everything in between