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For anyone starting over, stepping into a new space, or remembering how to be at home in their own skin.
I learned early how to shape-shift to fit in.
It wasn’t an intentional skill. It was survival.
In my early years, silence felt safer than truth. The adults in my life—loving in their way—were also emotionally repressed and unprepared to raise a child who felt…everything. There was no room for the mess of real feelings, so I learned to tuck mine away.
By the time I was 10, I could read the emotional weather in a room before I’d even stepped inside. I knew when to smile, when to disappear, when to hold my breath so I wouldn’t make a ripple.
I was there, but I wasn’t me.
A Night That Changed My Life
Years later, I went to my best friend Allison’s house for the first time.
I didn’t know what I was stepping into. I thought it would be another home where the real feelings stayed locked in bedrooms.
But the moment I walked in, I felt it in my body—this was different.
Her dad greeted me with a warmth I didn’t know how to receive. People actually looked at each other when they spoke. There was laughter in the kitchen and no one seemed to be scanning the room for the next emotional storm.
It was like my nervous system didn’t know whether to collapse in relief or run from the unfamiliar.
That night I realized something life-changing:
The way I had been living wasn’t the only way.
Belonging Without Disappearing
Belonging is a basic human need, but for some of us, the cost of entry has been our authenticity.
We learn to make ourselves smaller, quieter, easier.
We tell ourselves it’s worth it—to be part of something, to have a seat at the table.
But if the “belonging” requires us to leave our truth at the door, it’s not belonging. It’s performance.
I see it all the time in my clients’ energy fields: colors that should be vivid are dimmed, edges pulled in tight, as if they’re trying not to take up too much space.
They’ve learned that visibility comes with risk.
So they dim their own light before anyone else can.
What Our Energy Knows Before We Do
The aura doesn’t lie.
When we’re in a space that welcomes us fully, our colors expand. The field gets brighter, clearer. There’s movement and flow.
When we’re in a space that requires masking, the field compresses. The colors dull or scatter. We might feel tired for no reason or have a low hum of anxiety we can’t quite place.
Learning to notice those shifts is like having an internal compass for belonging.
It’s not about overanalyzing every room you walk into—it’s about recognizing when your body is telling you, It isn’t safe to be all of me here.
A Gentle Practice for This Season
Whether you’re stepping into a new school, job, community, or chapter of life, try this:
1. Before you enter the space, take a moment to feel your own energy. What color or sensation comes to mind?
2. As you interact, notice—does that color stay steady? Brighten? Dull?
3. When you leave, check in again. What’s different?
The goal isn’t to judge the space or yourself. It’s simply to start noticing where your energy expands and where it contracts.
That noticing alone begins to change things.
The Belonging I Choose Now
I’m no longer willing to belong in spaces where I have to disappear to be accepted.
And the most beautiful part? Once you stop making yourself small, you start finding (and creating) spaces where you fit without shrinking.
Sometimes they look like a kitchen full of laughter.
Sometimes they look like a circle of people you’ve only just met but who see you in a way that makes your whole body exhale.
That’s the belonging worth keeping.
The kind that lets you be both held and free.
~
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