Already Known ~

I have experienced many life changes over the past seven years, but the most profound change began in 2023. And honestly, nothing really happened.
I moved into a new home.
I became a grandma.
I declared it my pivot year.
I chose myself.
There wasn't one dramatic moment that changed everything.
Just a slow year of pivot, surrender, and self-uncovery.
It felt as though a fog had begun to lift, drawing me into a deeper life of contemplation.
I believe we all enter the world with something uniquely our own. A temperament. A personality. A soul already known by God. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." — Jeremiah 1:5
Yet we also enter the world completely dependent on the environments that shape us. Long before we're old enough to choose, we're learning to belong. We discover which parts of ourselves are welcomed, which feel like too much, what earns approval, and what feels safest to hide.
As children, we don't consciously decide to do this. We adapt.
Those adaptations help us navigate the world we've been given. But over time, they can become patterns. Eventually, it's difficult to tell the difference between who we truly are and who we've learned to be.
For years, I fell into the self-discovery loop. Read a book, check off the list. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
But it was that year of deep self-reflection when I realized that I'm not on a quest to discover myself.
I'm on a quest to uncover myself.
The woman God created has never been missing. She has been layered beneath expectations, survival strategies, fears, and the quiet adaptations that once helped me belong. I don’t need to discover her; I need to uncover her.
By 2023, I thought I had already changed dramatically. Divorce had reshaped my life. I had rebuilt my home. I had begun healing.
But I had only scratched the surface.
It wasn't until 2025, while writing Untucked, that I went even deeper into my own self-uncovery.
Even now, I wouldn't say I've arrived. There is no final destination. It feels more like gently untucking another layer, then another, allowing the soul to keep unfolding. Which often returns me to the little girl I remember at five years old.
She was curious. A little sassy. Full of light. She talked with God as though He were sitting beside her. She hadn't yet learned to measure herself through someone else's approval.
Somewhere along the way, life began teaching different lessons. And it’s my body that remembers the lesson before my mind does.
It remembers the sting of criticism.
The fear of abandonment.
The feeling that love could be uncertain.
So I became very good at criticizing myself before anyone else could.
And I became the first to abandon myself before anyone else could leave.
Until eventually, I became whoever I thought I needed to be, depending on who stood in front of me.
And it wasn’t until recently that I found myself standing in my living room, looking around at the life I've slowly built. And almost without thinking, an old question surfaced.
What would they think of my life now?
Maybe for you, "they" is a parent.
A spouse.
A friend.
Someone whose approval once mattered deeply.
And in that moment, I realized the conversation wasn't happening in the room.
It was happening inside me.
My life has finally become mine. I no longer need to imagine their judgments or opinions in my mind. I don’t need to arrange my life so it makes sense to someone else.
I have nothing to prove.
These walls hold no secrets.
So I really do have to ask myself, where am I still creating a narrative around another person?
The gift of that moment wasn't the answer.
It was noticing the question at all.
I realized I wasn't actually answering to them anymore.
A pathway that had quietly existed for decades was simply closing.
I almost missed it.
I released the expectations that had quietly traveled through relationships and generations.
I released the belief that love must be earned.
I released the version of myself that was still asking for permission to become who I already was.
I don't write these words to diminish anyone's memory.
I write them because healing requires honesty.
Every person in my life has shaped me in some way. Every season has left its imprint. I wouldn't erase any of it. Even the hardest chapters became part of the story that formed me.
But there comes a moment when we must ask ourselves:
Do these patterns still belong in the life I'm creating?
The old patterns don't usually disappear all at once. Sometimes they return disguised as second-guessing, over-explaining, or quietly looking outside ourselves for permission. But now I recognize them for what they are, just familiar habits quietly asking whether they're still needed.
For me, that has become the deeper work of self-uncovery.
Uncovering the person who has been there all along.
The woman God knew before I took my first breath.
The woman who no longer needs to fit in because she already belongs.

Peace,
​J~

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