I’ve been thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves and how easy it is to create narratives that limit us. What we believe to be true about ourselves is not always the truth—there is often so much more to our story, a complexity about our person that we forget to see.
For example: Over the last decade, I’ve told myself I’m a serious and studious person, even though up until my 20s, I would have called myself a rather goofy and playful person. I was often the one in my friend group leading the charge in pranks and late-night mischief—which usually just meant TPing the boys’ houses in our suburban neighborhood or dancing around Walmart at 1 a.m. until the staff kicked us out.
As a kid, I was silly too—it’s evident in home videos where I’m dancing around and making strange faces at the camera. I have memories of performing parodies at sleepovers, often while standing on a chair with a hairbrush mic.
Yet, this girl has been forgotten—likely because there was a moment between adole…
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