Coming Home to Myself
By Temple Franklin — Mind Body Spirit Hygiene Tools
I caught my reflection one ordinary afternoon and did not recognize the woman looking back. Not because of the years on my face — I had earned those. It was something behind the eyes. A flatness. A faraway. Somewhere along the way, I had set myself down like a bag of groceries and simply forgotten to pick myself back up. I could have told you what everyone around me needed. Their schedules, their moods, their favorite meals. But if you had asked me what I wanted — what I loved, what lit me up, what I needed to feel like me — I would have gone quiet. I genuinely did not know anymore.
One of the loneliest losses there is
This is one of the loneliest losses there is, dear one, and it almost never makes a sound. We don't lose ourselves all at once. We lose ourselves in increments — one swallowed opinion, one canceled plan, one "I'm fine" that wasn't, one more day of pouring from a cup nobody refilled. We give and adapt and accommodate until the woman we were becomes a stranger we used to know. There is a name for the work of finding her again: coming home to yourself.
No single dramatic homecoming
I want to be honest — there was no single dramatic homecoming. It happened in small, almost silly steps. I bought the flowers I liked, not the ones on sale. I let myself have an opinion at dinner and didn't take it back. I sat in silence long enough to hear my own voice again, underneath all the noise of everyone else's needs. I asked myself questions I had stopped asking: What do I actually want? What brings me joy? What do I believe, when no one is telling me what to think? And slowly, she came back. Not the old me — I wasn't trying to rewind. A truer me. The one who had been waiting underneath all that self-abandonment the whole time.
The most quietly radical thing a woman can do
Both are true. I grieve the years I spent disappeared. AND I GET TO spend the rest of my life on a first-name basis with myself. I don't say that to skip the grief — I say it because reclaiming yourself is the most quietly radical thing a woman can do.
Reclaimed, not rescued.
No one handed me back to myself. I went and got her. So if you have looked in the mirror lately and felt that flat, faraway stranger looking back — hear me: you are not gone. She is in there. You can come home to yourself, one small honest choice at a time. The flowers you like. The opinion you keep. The quiet long enough to hear your own voice. Come home, Lovely. She has been waiting for you. Welcome home. With love — Temple.
If you are finding your way back to yourself, my book was written for you — real tools for women in the messy middle, learning to stop abandoning themselves and come home. Real tools. Real women. In the messy middle. This is post #4 in Temple's Journey. The series so far: #1 The Only One Rowing · #2 The Losses No One Brings a Casserole For · #3 Grieving People Who Are Still Here.
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The Losses No One Brings a Casserole For
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