Reading my horoscope is not something I do on a daily or even a weekly basis. But once a month, I read a short column from a local astrologer whose insights land with uncanny precision. This time, the theme was about speaking and living your truth.
As a Libra, a sign that centers around restoring harmony, you'd think I'd mastered that skill. But living a balanced life isn't just about what you do and say out loud. It's about what you no longer hide. And that's a lifelong unraveling.
Transparency isn't something many of us were taught. Certainly not me. As the daughter of a young, divorced mother in the early 1960s, I learned quickly that being honest, even about simple truths, came with risk. Divorce was taboo, and our struggle was shameful. And I was reminded daily: Don't talk about our business to anyone.
So I didn't.
I learned early to guard our story and to manage my mother's emotions. To swallow my own fears. At five years old, I was already someone else's emotional caregiver. Bold curiosity and even basic needs were luxuries I learned to suppress.
My nervous system adapted, as all children's do, by tensing. Hiding became my baseline. It began to associate honesty with danger, so even telling the truth could make my body feel unsafe.
The Survival of Silence
These early imprints didn't stay tucked away in childhood. They followed me into adulthood, disguised as self-reliance and "strength." I didn't tell friends when my marriage was crumbling. I didn't reach out when I felt lost living off-grid with a toddler and no support system. I kept my financial struggles quiet, believing they were stains on my worth.
The pattern was so deep, I didn't even know I was doing it.
When you've been conditioned to hide, the body learns to constrict around emotion, expression, even joy. Your system becomes wired for secrecy. You begin to assume that no one wants the truth, that being seen equals being judged. And perhaps most painfully, you start believing your limitations are your identity.
The Lies We Tell Ourselves
Here's what I now understand:
The most damaging lies are not the ones we tell others but the ones we tell ourselves.
I told myself I had to "figure everything out" and that asking for help meant failure.
I told myself my struggles were proof I wasn't enough.
I told myself that if I couldn't hold it all together, I didn't deserve more than what I had.
But those weren't truths. They were protective patterns, residue from a nervous system still carrying the energetic imprint of "Don't tell."
And those internal lies disrupted my ability to receive connection, ease, abundance, and love.
Cracking the Pattern
It didn't shift overnight.
But slowly, I began to let a little more truth in, and every time I cracked the door, a bit more light got in.
When I stopped bypassing my inner reality and started telling the truth, first to myself, then to others, the emotional contraction began to ease. I could breathe deeper, and I could ask for what I needed.
And then…
All possibilities became available.
The Expansion Starts Inside
What I've learned and continue to practice is that expansion doesn't begin with vision boards, perfect routines, or spiritual bypasses.
It begins with the nervous system-level choice to stop abandoning yourself, especially when life gets hard.
And in that moment, the body starts to trust again.
Your field softens.
Receiving becomes possible.
Because you become safe to receive.
You Were Wired to Survive. Let's Shift to Receiving
If you've been holding yourself back, not because you lack ambition, but because something in you still believes it's safer to stay small, I want you to know this:
Your body isn't failing you.
It's protecting you.
That tightness around expression, that reluctance to ask for help, that urge to go it alone, didn't come from weakness. It came from a brilliantly adaptive nervous system that was doing its job.
But survival patterns are meant to be temporary.
And expansion asks for something different.
It asks for receptivity.
Your body already knows how to shift with subtle recalibration. Through listening and support.
If you're ready to stop surviving and start allowing more in...
more support, more ease, more of you, you don't have to figure it out alone.
Your next chapter begins with one decision:
To stop hiding and start receiving.
👉