When You’ve Lost Yourself: The Return to Self Journey

Aug 11

12 min read

Returning to ourselves is like coming back home and building a fortress.

Every day, we leave home to go into the world, visit others' homes, and maybe spend a few nights in hotels.

Sometimes we bring other people's beliefs, fears, coping methods, and baggage back home, and it becomes clutter that doesn't belong to us.

Sometimes, home gets lonely, so we invite people in, but without rules, some people start breaking things, sleeping over without an invitation, dumping their garbage in our basements, or redecorating.

Other times, our home lacks self-awareness and self-love; the door has no lock, the windows aren't impenetrable, and there's no "enter at your own risk" sign, inviting people to cross boundaries, destroy your home, and burn it to the ground.

Sometimes we wander too far or stay away from home too long, and we forget how to get back home, or there's nothing left to find. All your memories, sense of Self, and history are gone or damaged.

You're left with a mess that others created, and now you have to rebuild.

A yellow house with a forest in the background

What does "Return to Self" mean?

Returning to Self is the practice of coming home, rebuilding and reinforcing it your way

The expression "returning to ourselves" is not about rewinding time or returning to the person we were before our home (our identity) got trashed.

It's the practice of coming back home, period.

We spend a lot of time away from "home" when we go to work, to church, to school, when we visit or spend time with family and friends, when we're exploring the outdoors or visiting another town.

Then you come back home with new information, new beliefs, mindsets, perspectives, ideas, and baggage that doesn't necessarily belong to you. Sometimes you accept it; other times it is given to you forcefully or placed in your bag without you knowing. You get home, and you set it down, or start redecorating, adopting what doesn't belong to you. You're not really sure what it means or if it aligns with you, but you leave it anyway.

It's the practice of cleaning up your home; getting rid of what doesn't align with your truth, throwing out stuff that people gave you, cleaning the dirt that got stuck under your shoes while you stepped onto someone else's muddy front lawn, or removing the makeup that someone said you needed to be loved or accepted.

The practice of reinforcing your home after you let people in and they destroyed it. You fix the windows they broke, clean the blood from their wounds off the floor, throw away the broken fine china and replace it with ceramics, the torn up couch they crashed on without permission, building a fence around your home and adding an "enter at your own risk" sign to let others know that you run the show at home and will be kicked out if they don't act accordingly.

The practice of rebuilding your home from ashes after it's been burnt to the ground, whether because the clutter got so wild it became a safety hazard, or someone quietly and gradually surrounded your home with dynamite and one day it exploded. You look around and find pieces of yourself, a photo here, a journal entry there, a keepsake from your childhood, or you find nothing at all but an empty field.

"Returning to ourselves" is returning home in its current state; imperfect, messy, damaged, or gone altogether, sitting with yourself, getting to know yourself again, and rebuilding the home you deserve to own.

You start by cleaning the soil of debris, planting seeds for your new garden, and digging up a hole to build your foundation.

Or, you met some people who found your map back home and threw it out. Now you're lost; you don't remember your way home, so you wander the streets and paths that belong to someone else. You start losing sense of who you are because where you are has nothing to anchor you, no history, no reminders, no memories. You start blaming, shaming and hating yourself for being so stupid.

Staying lost away from home or remaining in the ashes in an empty field is not a way to live, and it eventually starts making you sick. You know deep down that if you don't find your way back home, clean up your home or rebuild it, you will die out there.

You don't have a map. You don't have tools. You don't have armour, and you don't have a support system.

You only have yourself, and if you get real quiet and attentive, you start noticing that there's a voice inside, a compass called your intuition.

You listen to it, and as you start walking and trusting it, you notice things that feel familiar or safe. You can't quite explain it, but you keep going. Eventually, you find yourself back home.

Or as you sit in the empty field, in the quiet of the night, you notice the moon, or a flower that didn't burn in the fire, and it reminds you of what felt safe and aligned with your truth. Or the voice inside starts saying, it doesn't matter if you remember or not; trust yourself; decide right here, right now, who you want to be and what you want your home to feel like.

You start by committing to loving yourself no matter what, then getting to know yourself and how you ended up here.

You start being honest with yourself about your part in this outcome, seeing the truth of where you're at, taking accountability and responsibility, seeing the truth of the world, then being grateful for what is still there and the opportunity to start from scratch.

Lastly, you forgive yourself and the world to free yourself from fears, limited beliefs, attachments, pain and grief.

As you flow through these practices, you move through the rebuild, and one day you're looking up at a house capable of protecting you, decorated with everything that belongs to you and mirrors your new Self, clean and clutter-free, smelling of lavender and just baked chocolate chip cookies.

A scene depicting a living room with various furniture pieces

Why We Get Lost in the First Place

We get lost because the world teaches us who to be before we ever learn who we are.

The first people to influence who we become are our families, and for most of us, that means learning how to survive from a very young age.

For some of us, our lives, identities and futures have already been planned and mapped out before we're born, and then no matter who we try to be as we grow older, we are force-fed their agendas or ideal picture of who we must be.

Some have parents who couldn't take care of themselves, much less take care of us. We are born in a world of substance abuse, alcohol, abusive relationships, and are often left to raise ourselves.

Some parents leave altogether or are physically present but emotionally neglect us. Their absence forces us to find ways to cope on our own and teaches us that we are alone.

Others are raised by parents consumed by generational trauma, dysregulation and their own conditioning, leaving us to carry their burdens through discipline and pleasing to avoid conflict. We learn early that catering to others keeps us safe.

We go to school, and more stuff is added to our "house".

Then we go to work, have relationships and friendships, and they add more stuff.

We were never taught how to love ourselves, be aware of ourselves and others, listen to our intuitions, to speak up and set boundaries, and never had the space to be grateful because all our time was spent surviving and absorbing what isn't ours, until eventually we hate ourselves and don't know how to forgive ourselves for not knowing any better.

Our metaphorical house (identity) has already been built by others before we even get the chance to make one choice.

The House Metaphor

If you remember the metaphor of a "house" that represents your Self, then you've probably read Iyanla Vanzant's book, "In the Meantime".

I love this concept, and the journey of returning to Self was a way of expanding it.

The house is your Self. It's your mind, body, and soul.

The foundation is what the house is built on. That could be beliefs, values, codes, principles, and practices.

Inside the house, there are rooms like the living room, kitchen, basement, bedrooms, and bathroom. Every room represents a part of you.

The living room could represent your social Self; this is the part of you where you let people in and what you show the world.

The kitchen could represent our hearts. How we love, care, and support ourselves and others.

The bathroom could represent self-care. This is where we take care of our bodies, release energy that doesn't belong to us, see our truths through the mirror, and have the utmost privacy to ponder life.

The bedrooms can represent multiple things, such as our inner child, passions, education, creativity, spiritual practices, where we rest, our past, and our future.

The basement could represent your shadow Self. The basement is dark, musty, and sometimes just a crawl space. This is where we store things and forget about them or place things we can't let go of, and it takes up space for no reason. And if we're not careful or don't know how to protect ourselves, someone we thought we trusted pushes us down the stairs and locks the door. Sometimes we're not lost, and our house is not in ashes; we're just locked in the basement with no flashlight.

The doors and fence represent our boundaries.

The windows are the eyes of the Self.

The things inside the home, like the clutter, represent what belongs to others. Other people's baggage that they dumped on you, or gave you. It doesn't belong to you, so you don't really know what to do with it. You leave the stuff on a table, in a corner, on the stairs, or in a cupboard. Sometimes it's been there so long that it becomes a part of the house, so you don't throw it out, or it's too heavy to drag out to the garbage, or you're too overwhelmed to deal with it.

When I speak of the damage that people inflict on your house, it represents trauma. Emotional neglect, abuse, eroded intuition, self-doubt, false beliefs, accidents, manipulation, and chronic anger are some examples. In the house metaphor, that looks like broken windows, burned-up bedrooms, a bathroom with no door, and holes in the walls.

It also represents conditioning. This is when people start redecorating your house; they don't agree with your paintings, so they replace them. Your inner child bedroom is filled with scary things, or lies your parents told you, or a scary movie playing on the TV over and over. Your creativity room is filled with how-to books and other people's work. Your spiritual practice room is filled with other people's beliefs. Your basement doesn't just have the things you threw down there, but also your family's forgotten things that they gave you when you left their home.

Rebuilding our house means replacing the windows, throwing out everything that doesn't mirror us, cleaning the blood off the floor, fixing our fence and adding locks to our doors.

It also means going into the basement, with a lighter flame, and sitting with all the old and broken things that scared us or felt overwhelming, sifting through it, deciding what's ours and what's not, and facing the damage of the foundation. As you start clearing things out and moving things around, you find a flashlight or even the switch to the basement light. Then, your stuff doesn't look so scary anymore. It looks old, or what used to look like a scary clown is just a painting with your dad's name on it.

We clean up all the rooms and remove what we don't want anymore, and we fill them up with new things. You paint some new paintings, cook some new meals, and try a new bubble bath.

And then you might realize, "Hey, I used to love spaghetti; I haven't had any in a while because my ex said I was too fat to eat carbs."

Or, "Hey, this painting is not black and gray this time. I used colours!", feeling joy and safety.

Maybe you go outside and start building a garden. This could represent a business or a family.

Every small step and effort you put into your house allowed you to rebuild your house, your way. Stronger, bigger, with an alarm system.

A garden of flowers with a fountain in the middle

The Tools Are Inside Of You

Self-love, self-awareness, truth, gratitude, and forgiveness

It doesn't matter if you're far from home, or your home is gone entirely, or you're locked in the dark basement; the tools you need to rebuild your house are inside of you.

All you need is your heart for self-love and forgiveness, your eyes for self-awareness and gratitude, and your mind and mouth for truth.

Self-love is when you show yourself compassion instead of judgement, care instead of blame, and choose yourself even when you feel unworthy.

Self-awareness is when you take off the rose-colored glasses, the false narratives and beliefs in your mind, and see yourself and others through truth.

Truth is when you are honest with yourself and others even when you're scared, embarrassed, want to run away, hide, or it's uncomfortable.

This

Gratitude is being thankful for what remains, for the lessons, for the people that stuck around, and for life in general, even when you feel lost or have nothing left.

Forgiveness is forgiving yourself instead of shaming yourself, hating yourself, punishing yourself or convincing yourself that you were weak or unworthy.

How the Return to Self Framework Works

Healing is non-linear, and the pillars are themes that you flow through

Each pillar is a container or a toolbox for different purposes.

As you repair and rebuild different parts of your house, your Self, you use different toolboxes and different tools.

One day, you might use the self-love toolbox to cook meals that nourish you, or repair the water pipe so you can wash off the dirt, or maybe you need some glue to fill up the cracks in the walls.

You might use the self-awareness toolbox to replace the foggy, broken windows, the alarm system at the front door, or the peephole in your front door.

You might use the truth toolbox to write a "no soliciting" sign, hang up pictures that mirror your spiritual practice or stitch your childhood teddy bear that got torn one day when your dad was upset.

You might use the gratitude toolbox to build your garden, plant flowers, or hang up a birdhouse.

You might use the forgiveness toolbox to write yourself an apology letter, to paint, to make something for your inner child, or to build a heart out of clay to place in your living room.

Sometimes, you may open the toolbox and stare blankly at the tools, tired.

Or throw them across the room when they won't work properly or as fast as you want them to.

And other times, you'll talk to them like they're your friends and be grateful you have tools at all.

In the beginning, you'll need them often. You're not a handyman after all. The hung-up paintings may be crooked, or the window a little loose, or the clay heart fell and broke.

With time and practice, you learn how to use them, and the repairs are sturdier and longer-lasting.

As the house represents your Self, the toolboxes in the house are inside of you. You might forget where they are, or can't see them, but they are there. The best part is that nobody else can use your tools or you use someone else's tools.

Each toolbox and tool is designed specifically for you.

A white toolbox siting in a field of flowers

How This Framework Shows Up In My Work

Everything I do, speak on, believe, create and embody comes from my lived experience, including my healing journey

This framework or concept isn't something I created while sitting at my laptop one day.

I lived it and didn't know it at the time.

My healing journey started when I decided to finally choose myself.

I distanced myself from everyone and everything so that I could focus on myself. I needed the noise to stop so that I could hear, see, understand, and rebuild myself with clarity.

After four years of healing my trauma, unlearning my conditioning, learning about my symptoms, patterns, and mindsets, setting boundaries, and creating new habits, I realized that I had leaned on different themes or pillars to guide me.

I learned, trusted, and didn't give up, and eventually, I was home.

It was a complete mess. So, I went in, took out what I wanted to keep and burned the whole house down and whatever else was in it. I sat in the ashes, the debris, the rubble, looked around and said to myself, "Alright then, let's rebuild this home the way we want to build it and make sure the rest of the world knows that we have rules now!"

I didn't care what the neighbours would think anymore; I didn't care if visitors didn't agree with my rules; I didn't care if my sign scared people away, and I didn't care what kind of baggage people brought over during their stay; my home wasn't a storage space.

My home is mine, and now, I make sure that I never wander too far; I don't bring back anything that doesn't resonate with me, I don't accept any gifts that contradict my truths, and I removed the door leading down to the basement to let in some natural light.

This framework is not just words on paper.

It's my healing path.

The whole reason I am here today.

And now, I lean on it again, to help you find your own tools, find your way home, and rebuild your home.