(471  words – 3.5 min read)

What does it mean to become my authentic-self? There are thousands if not millions of articles and books about this subject. I read only a few. The most influential one was “Love Warrior “ by Glennon Doyle Melton. She beautifully takes us to the journey of her becoming true to herself and learning how to live her authentic self. Inspired by her very authentic memoir, I began thinking about my personal experience through writing my memoir. Have I ever functioned through my authentic-self? How authentic is my memoir? Am I brave enough to write a very authentic memoir? And what does that mean?

There is an old Persian saying – “good thoughts, good deeds, good words”. I interpret it as meaning our thoughts should be in line with what we say and what we do.

Being familiar with “good thoughts, good deeds, good words”, I know I have subconsciously tried to practice the concept of living self-authentic, but how do I find those occasions that I lived my authentic-self? When I did something and felt peace and determined inside despite outside criticism? Was it when I decided on my divorces to liberate myself and my daughter from others’ control and move forward towards independence? Was it when I made the decision to drop out of physics school because it wasn’t my cup of tea? Now that I look back, I see the consequences of living my authentic self were positive overall and helped me make progress towards a more peaceful life. I see that all along it has been my goal to avoid pretending and be myself. That is one major element of becoming independent.

Writing this memoir is perhaps the best practice of living my authentic self I have ever done. If I want to go further, I would like to ask myself, what were the consequences of those occasions when I did not live my authentic-self? That is the best outcome of writing the memoir. A self-reflection through this writing practice. I only started learning about those consequences by writing my memories on the page and reading and editing it over and over.

It is beautiful to go through the iterative process of reading and re-reading, editing and re-editing in order to offer a more connected and more authentic story to my readers. Doing this feels like I am scrubbing old regrets off to feel the freshness of the air on my skin.

I learned about all those many moments that I pretended and said and did things that were against my thoughts and my values. I fought with my heart’s desire and instead did things that caused me anxiety, fear, and stress. I didn’t know better, but trying to write those moments authentically is building a more authentic-self of me. Every step counts and make us closer to ourselves!

 

Celebrate life!

Shabnam

Editing Credit: M. Curtis

Picture Credit: https://pixabay.com