Lost to Found and Back Again

By Kassie C.

Why are we all so scared of the idea of being lost?

I think a lot of the feelings around being lost come from comparison to other people or comparison to where we think we are supposed to be. A common understanding of feeling lost is being found and we define that when we have a path, a destination, a final point. Personally, I don’t think growth works like that. And when it does, I feel like it may be at the expense of part of our soul. When it comes to feeling like we are on the “right path”, we owe it to ourselves to question if it is of our own volition or a societal influence.

I struggle with this concept because looking back at my life, when I have felt like I am on the “right path” to finding myself I often have ended up sacrificing something to stay there.

I have had growing career success but sacrificed all my time. Because of my ED I have looked the way I always wanted to but sacrificed my mental health. I have been in partnerships that seemed like they were written in storybooks but I sacrificed myself.

Maybe that’s the true conflict we are feeling – the sacrifice of parts of what makes us who we are to be somewhere or something that we think we should be.

We often hold ourselves to standards that we do not put on the people we love. We can hate ourselves for being too human and we are often our own biggest critics.

But the way we talk to ourselves matters. Learning to become my own biggest fan is what has led to the to most change in my life. I have to take myself on every journey I do and learning to love myself started with learning to tolerate myself which gave me the space to find out who I am without sacrificing something.

We live in a world where society often tells us we will never be enough, so having the confidence to be present in our decisions and be unabashedly proud of ourselves are radical qualities we should embrace in order to break down those societal norms.

Glennon Doyle is a writer who has had integral influence on me in my journey. She once said “Your job throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

So, question everything, radically love yourself, be bold about it and don’t be afraid to disappoint others so at the end of the day, at the end of your life when you look in the mirror you are not disappointed in yourself.

My name is Kassie C. I am in my late twenties and am trying to live what I preach – picking yourself first and that loving yourself really is the best medicine. It’s not always easy and it definitely is not always pretty but it’s real. I hope joining me on this journey will provide perspective, connection and solace. So, here’s to life because for good or bad we are all in it together :).