how learning to love myself is becoming part of my legacy

Over the last couple of years, I have spent a lot of time learning about myself—the deep kind of introspection that comes when you really examine your life and try to understand how you ended up where you are.

For most of my life, I would have told you I was a pretty self-aware person. I felt well-rooted, with a solid understanding of where I came from. I knew my family history, how my parents and grandparents were raised, and how their choices shaped my path. I carried tremendous gratitude for my parents, who consciously and unconsciously made sacrifices to give my brother and me a life they could have only dreamed of.

I thought I understood my strengths and shortcomings—the areas where I had to work harder because things didn't come naturally. I knew what it meant to lose someone I loved, something I experienced many times, perhaps never as profoundly as when I lost my best friend Emma.

Yet for years, I carried a deep knowing that something wasn't right with me. Diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD following my accident, I had been medicated and treated for more than 18 years. Despite this, I never found the right combination that allowed me to truly thrive.

The Breaking Point

When I hit burnout in 2021 and finally gave myself permission to just stop, something shifted. During those glorious six months of rest, my body began to heal through sleep and exercise. More importantly, I started to really examine who I was and what was happening beneath the surface. I recognized all the things that were no longer serving me: the habits, the lack of boundaries, the career that was draining my soul.

Slowly, one by one, I started to make changes.

It has been one of the hardest journeys of my life—a complete makeover from the inside out. From the outside, it might look like I simply quit my job and started a new career. But it has been worth every difficult minute.

Seeing Clearly

Not feeling stuck has allowed me to see things about myself that I had missed or explained away for years. I used to dismiss my impulsivity as just being passionate, blame my forgetfulness on fatigue, and claim I didn't notice my bouncing knee even as the whole table shook. It turns out these were all symptoms of something deeper.

Greater self-awareness and time for reflection have given me space to recognize these patterns and choose to do something about them. As a parent of a neurodivergent child, I am choosing to pursue testing myself—not to seek labels, but to understand how I best learn, work, and operate in this world. It's my way of modeling for my daughter that we all have different abilities, and understanding ourselves is valuable at any age.

The Legacy I Want to Leave

This all connects to my legacy and how I want my children to remember me. I want them both to understand that loving themselves for who they are is the most important gift they can give themselves. Because in the words of RuPaul: "If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

The journey inward isn't easy, but it's necessary. What I've learned is that true self-awareness isn't about having all the answers—it's about being brave enough to ask the right questions and honest enough to sit with whatever you discover.