Remembering Who You Were Before the World Told You Who to Be

This morning, gratitude found me as I felt a deep connection with my youngest self, cultivated over the last few years of Untucking. The little girl who existed before the world’s conditions and influences began shaping her. The one who had a voice and moved through life guided by pure curiosity and wonder, and a little bit of SASS.
It’s a sacred thing to return to that version of ourselves. To connect to the Divine blueprint we entered the world with, before the beliefs, fears, and expectations of others molded us.
From the moment we are born, we start absorbing the world around us. We are influenced, for good reasons, by the adults who raise us, their values, their wounds, their ways of navigating life. We are shaped by the rules and structure of education, by religion, by culture, and by the invisible systems that tell us what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s beautiful, and what’s acceptable.
Even the strongest-minded among us are not immune to influence. Over time, those influences begin to dictate who we think we should be. Somewhere along the way, many of us start tucking away the parts of ourselves that don’t fit neatly into the structure or the story we were given.
As I look at the world we live in, I see influence everywhere, stronger and louder than ever. Social media has become a kind of mirror, reflecting back whatever we seek. If we expose ourselves to fear, it feeds us fear. If we search for beauty, we find beauty. But either way, it is shaping us. Every click, every scroll, every comparison speaks into our becoming.
And it makes me wonder how much of who we are today was truly born of our own soul’s wisdom, and how much was borrowed from someone else’s influence?
As I sit with that, I find myself drawn back to the innocence of that young girl untouched by conditioning. The one God made with sacred contracts written on her heart. Before the tucking.
Maybe the spiritual work of adulthood is to return to the child who already knew who she was before the world told her otherwise.
So I offer a few questions as invitations to reflect:
Who were you before the world began shaping you?
What is your earliest memory of feeling completely free to be yourself?
When did you first learn to tuck away a part of who you were to belong?
Whose beliefs or fears have you carried that were never yours to hold?
What would it look like to return to the sacred contract God placed in your soul?
I’m convinced the journey isn’t about becoming someone new but about remembering who you were all along. The one made in Divine image, whole and untucked.