The Self I Put Down — And The One I Returned To
There are years in our lives when we stop hearing ourselves.
Life builds around us in layers — partnership, motherhood, survival, responsibility — until the voice inside is barely a whisper beneath it all.
My disappearance happened that way.
Quietly.
Incrementally.
A thousand small choices that felt harmless at the time: a need ignored, a boundary softened, a dream postponed, a version of myself I'd "get back to later."
Eventually, "later" never came.
Before
Before all that, I was nothing like the woman I became.
I grew up with a single mother who modeled independence, not sacrifice. I moved across continents with a natural confidence and flourished wherever my feet were planted. People gravitated toward me because I lived fully and freely.
Then life shifted.
Love arrived.
Motherhood arrived.
Responsibility thickened.
And piece by piece, I drifted from myself.
Not suddenly. Not dramatically. Just quietly.
The Breaking Point
The breaking point came too many times that I ignored because I simply didn't have time.
The breakthrough that could not be ignored, however, was noticing I couldn't fake my happiness to my daughter any longer. This broke me to my core. How can I lead, teach, and guide her through life, living as the ghost that was once me?
That moment scared me far more than any crisis in the relationship ever had.
Because back then, it was okay to lose myself, but I couldn't lose the mother I wanted to be.
So I asked the question I had avoided for years:
What do I need in order to show up fully for her?
The answer was uncomfortable: I needed to return to myself before I returned to anyone else.
The Return
Rebuilding didn't start with big transformations.
It started with small acts of self-presence — brushing my hair, putting on makeup again, choosing clothes intentionally, claiming an hour to move my body, breathing before reacting.
These weren't aesthetic choices. They were evidence that I still existed underneath everything I had carried.
And then came something I hadn't experienced in a decade: true solitude.
Five days wholly to myself — not isolated, not interrupted, not dividing my attention between needs — and something opened.
Not a new truth, but an old one resurfacing: I had never needed permission to be myself. I had simply needed space.
In that quiet, I remembered the woman I was in Switzerland, in Italy, in Paris, in New York — not because I want to be her again, but because she is proof that I have always belonged to myself first.
A Universal Truth
This isn't about gender or about blame.
It's about a universal human truth: When we abandon ourselves, we eventually become unrecognizable. And when we return to ourselves, the entire ecosystem of our lives begins to change.
I am not returning to the girl I was.
I am returning to the woman I am — one who understands now that selfhood is not optional, and presence is not something you perform, but something you build through truth.
Luxskol began in this realization. Not as a platform for my voice alone, but as a collective space for the voices, ideas, and teachings that helped carry me here. None of us were taught how to be whole. But we can learn. Together.
