Finding my true nature

The long road to becoming myself

The early days

Like many people who grew up in middle-class America in the late 80’s & 90’s— I learned how important it is to “fit in”.

For me, it was an exquisitely nuanced fall into the abyss of uniformity. My decline from a happy well-adjusted child to a miserable and complicated teen (lasting well into my adult life) was devastating to those who knew me from the beginning.

I entered this world as an easy spirit as my mom says, got along with everyone and didn’t get my feathers ruffled too easily. I enjoyed time alone, but thrived in social situations and rarely had trouble or drama with my peers. I always fit in—I was invited to birthday parties and never felt a sense of rejection from friends or classmates.

As I entered junior high, everything about my world changed. Soon it became clear how valuable physical appearance was and how powerful one could become if deemed attractive. Fitting in started getting a bit more complicated.

Unintended hierarchies began to form around me governed by twelve and thirteen year old underdeveloped minds.

What we looked like mattered most.

Who you had a crush on was talked about endlessly.

How fast (and in what way) our bodies were developing was often discussed publicly.

Who was cool and who was a loser was a conversation that resurfaced every hour on the hour and I realized early on that being a loser was a label to avoid at all costs—and the only way to not become one was to fit in with the ‘cool kids.’

But what my 12-year-old mind didn’t have the capacity to realize is that fitting in meant that I was about to go on a long (I’m talking nearly 20 year) journey of betraying myself.

By the time I got to high school, I learned that I could leverage my status to get anything I wanted—even though my light within was slowly starting to dull.

I was still easy going and was well liked by my peers, but to maintain that status meant that a darker, more sinister side of my personality developed without my noticing.

I learned without trying what keeps people likeable: a commitment to being what everyone wants you to be, while pretending you are being yourself.

To fit in, I was friends with people I didn’t really like.

To fit in, I believed I had to look a certain way. (leading to a 25 year long complicated relationship with food and fitness)

To fit in, I drank alcohol at parties on weekends in high school.

To fit in, I tolerated mean or abusive comments from people I called friends.

To fit in, I ignored what makes me unique.

To fit in, I turned myself into someone completely different.

And it worked for me— in high school, I fit in. I was popular. I had lots of friends and never worried about being left out.

But what I didn’t know at the time was that I wasn’t really being me.

The protective shell I cast over the real me was an illusion. I was inadvertently playing the role of a popular teenaged girl. I didn’t have the self-awareness to see that I was creating my own demise.

I had no sense of my inner voice.

My first decade as an adult

The first few years after high school were fairly disastrous for me. Leaving high school meant leaving the arena where I was ‘known.’ I graduated high school in 2001, long before Instagram could replace the illusion that people were actually invested in my every move. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me, I didn’t know where I fit in.

Because I had low self-esteem from being a social chameleon for years while pretending I was confident, I attracted a man who was afflicted in the same way (more on that relationship in this post). We destroyed each other for the better part of six years.

I also got a degree in secondary education so that I could return to my ‘glory days.’ I had no idea at the time that I was recreating the environment where I felt most ‘seen.’ So you can imagine my horror at age 29 (after teaching for seven years) when I realized that I was a high school teacher so I could be ‘popular’ again, since I knew how to fit in in that environment.

I was a dance teacher and a cheerleading coach, the same interests I had as a high school student.

I also had a circle of girlfriends during this decade that I didn’t really have anything in common with, but I fit in with them. They were similar to me—popular in high school, on the hunt for a story book ending and binge drinking on the weekends.

We went on girls trips, went to boozy brunches and did all of the ‘normal’ things women in their 20’s did. Beyond our weekend activities, I had very little in common with these women but they felt familiar—I felt like I at least fit in in this group. I was farther from my intuition than ever.

The only indication that I even had any intuitive voice was the fact that I was consistently miserable and confused—the biggest indication that intuition is being consistently ignored.

Beyond the classroom

I write a lot about when I quit my teaching job (at age 30) because it marked the beginning of my return to self. Everything before age 30 was an illusion I built without knowing it.

I had zero-self awareness for nearly twenty years. My life felt like it was spinning all the time—no control over my emotions, attracting people into my life who triggered my every insecurity and were a mirror of all of the aspects of my spirit that needed healing. But I didn’t see it.

It was only when I started practicing yoga and reading books on self-awareness that I slowly began moving from asleep to awake.

I had ignored myself for so many years caught up in the drama of being like everyone else. I had no idea what to do, I felt like I couldn’t find the place where I fit in. I realized that everything I yearned for in life was just external programming.

Everything I had done so far in life was to check the boxes of life laid out for me by a collection of external entities:

Graduate from high school, check.

Go to college, check.

Get a secure job, check.

Buy a house, check.

Date someone who looks good on paper, check.

When I started waking up, I began reversing the checklist:

Quit my secure job

Finally broke up with the wrong guy

Sold my house in the suburbs to move into a studio apartment downtown

Travelled to Europe for a summer

Moved from Phoenix to Vermont

Got a job as a flight attendant and traveled the world for three years

Lived in six states in a four year span.

I really didn’t know what I was doing for many years after I started to wake up. All I knew is that I had, at the very least, escaped the programmed version of myself. I was starting to trust my inner voice.

Trading Wings for Roots

Three months into my job as a flight attendant (2018-2021), I realized that I was never going to last. It was too repetitive and became monotonous very quicky: drive an hour the airport, commute to Salt Lake City (via plane), wait for my trip to sign in, meet my crew and work 7-12 flights over a span of three days, commute back home and drive an hour back to my house.

It was exhausting.

Most of my colleagues loved going to new cities and exploring, going out and seeing what the world had to offer. Somehow I was always exhausted from the early wake up calls and changing time zones—I rarely took advantage of the perks of the job. I knew I didn’t fit in.

I felt so envious of the people who would talk about how much they loved the job and how someone will have to pry their cold dead hands off the beverage cart someday. I wanted to care about the job, and I wanted it to be what I was searching for, but it wasn’t. I was still learning to trust my intuition.

The familiar feeling of misery started to slowly creep in. It felt very similar to the feeling I had when I knew that my career as a teacher was coming to an end. I knew that misery was a sign that I wasn’t in the right place- I had to make a move.

I quit that job after 3.5 years, half the time it took me to realize that teaching wasn’t where I belonged-I was making progress.

After quitting the airline, I had a short-lived career as a real estate agent; that one only lasted a few months. As soon as the misery set in, I cut the cord. My ability to trust myself was getting stronger.

I decided it was time to finally figure out who I was.

Not knowing where to start, I put all of my energy into my garden. We had just moved into our home in our small town in Idaho and I had spent years dreaming of having a large garden and now I had nothing but time.

Day by day, my garden started to heal me. I was learning lessons from my plants that I didn’t know they could teach me.

I knew that the work I was going to pursue was going to be a match for my truest self aligned with this season in my life. I wanted to find a way to merge my three deepest callings: writing, gardening and helping women feel seen & understood.

I learned from my career as a high school dance teacher (95% female students) that young women have a really hard time trusting themselves.

I learned from my career as a flight attendant (80% female colleagues) that grown women have a really hard time trusting themselves.

My garden taught me (and continues to teach me) that who I am meant to be is revealed in nature. The wisdom found in the soil, seeds and sun are all designed to guide me back to who I am within.

I noticed that there are so many parallels between a season in the garden and a season in life. I noticed that a plant in my garden goes through many of the same challenges that I do: adapting to change, dealing with threats to progress, a desire for harvest and needing to be placed nearby growth companions.

My garden taught me that we don’t all have the same conditions for growth and that paying attention to our natural likes and dislikes is the key to thriving.

I’ve learned that trusting my intuition is the path to discovering my true nature.

I finally feel like I am where I belong, roots planted in healthy soil. My garden was certainly overgrown from the 20 years of neglect, but day by day, pulling one weed at a time—I’ve cleared out the mess I accidently made.

Everything I plant moving forward is with intention and self-trust. I know with certainty that I have done the hardest work there is; learning to trust my intuition.

I finally fit within.

-Ashley