What if the work works?

I've spent many years figuring out how to be myself more fully. How to live in alignment with myself, my values, and beliefs. How to live with more agency and autonomy so that, ultimately, I can be more authentic and whole. It’s not been an easy journey and I’m still on it. I will always be healing and growing.

As an adopted person and a theatre artist I spent many years finding my authenticity on stage. By showing up so perfectly in each role that I played I was able to craft a persona that felt real but was actually a mask for the much deeper stuff that I wasn’t aware of.

Many artists turn to art because of pain, and I know that art has provided a safe space for me to express and explore the parts of myself that needed tending to. I also know that acting class and rehearsals were never substitutes for therapy or the self reflection necessary to do the inner work that healing and self actualization require.

Pain and trauma are tricky things because for those of us who live with them long enough they can feel like “who we are”. The pain becomes a constant buzzing that is “normal" until it’s not.

Experiences of trauma and lifelong grief or pain are disorienting and keep us disconnected. They teach us to adapt in any situation and this is exactly what made (and makes) me such a good actor. I am the ultimate chameleon. Except that at some point I realized I was living in someone else's skin and the discomfort of that knowledge was greater than the discomfort of starting to do the work.

One of the things I’ve learned through my work as a performer, with other adoptees, women, and my lived experience is:

Most people aren’t actually afraid of doing the work.

They’re afraid of what might change if doing the work works.

Because when you start to:

✅ trust your voice

✅ set boundaries

✅ tell the truth

✅ take up space

Your relationships shift.

Your roles shift.

Your sense of self shifts.

And that can feel just as destabilizing as staying stuck where you are.

So instead, many people stay in a version of “almost”:

…almost saying what they mean.

…almost making the change.

…almost fully showing up.

Not because they don’t want more, but because some part of them is still trying to keep things the same because it feels safer.

But real change requires us to dig deeper, not just become more aware, but to become someone who can tolerate the changes that awareness creates.

And that’s not something you can force.

It’s something you build capacity for.

#migratingtowardwholeness