“I feel like a stranger in my own skin, disconnected from my thoughts and emotions. I don’t know what I want or where I’m going.”

When I read that, it made my heart ache a little because I know that feeling.

Before I started my healing journey, my relationship with myself and my body wasn’t great. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin.

And honestly, it’s one of the reasons why I started drinking at such a young age.

I was at a party and I didn’t feel like I belonged, and the drinking helped me escape. And even if it was fake and it wasn’t real, I felt like I fit in.

I’m sure I’ve told you before that I felt so damaged that when I started making jewelry years ago, I literally created a collection called Damaged Goods because that’s how I saw myself.

Disconnected and out of place.

Like everyone else got the handbook for living and being human, but God skipped over me.

Women Are Living With This Pain Every Day

And what made me feel emotional wasn’t just remembering my own pain.

A lot of it is knowing how many women are still living with this pain today.

There are so many women who feel disconnected from themselves, and they don’t feel safe in their bodies. The one thing that’s truly ours, truly yours, and you don’t feel safe in it.

So many women have become strangers to themselves without even realizing it.

And for us, it starts at such a young age. We carry it into adulthood.

Then we numb out, scroll, stay busy, consume every podcast, overthink, drink, all to avoid things getting quiet.

When Things Get Quiet

Because when you’re alone, and there’s no noise, you can feel the disconnection and loneliness.

And when you live with that long enough, it starts to feel permanent, like it’s never going to change.

Like it’s just who you are and you’ll always feel disconnected so another 3 years pass and you still haven’t started the business, which means another 3 years of doubting yourself, and watching other people live their purpose while telling yourself “maybe someday.”

Like you don’t fit in with the world or even with yourself, and you never fully relax around other people because part of you is always performing, and shape-shifting, trying to avoid rejection.

Like you’re always just on the outside looking in, trying to figure out how to get in, but staying on the sidelines just reinforces the belief that you don’t belong and you’re not worthy enough to fully go after what you want.

But I Need You to Know Something

You are not damaged, and there’s nothing wrong with you.

You are worthy and you belong.

It may not feel like that because your body has learned to protect you, and disconnection is one of the ways it’s been doing so.

The Three Protective Patterns

Over the past few months, I’ve started noticing three protective patterns women tend to fall into when they no longer feel safe being fully connected to themselves and their bodies.

I call them: ~The Stranger. ~The Intellectual. ~The Performer.

I created a short Archetype Quiz to help you discover which protective pattern your body may be living in right now.

You can take it here.

No sign-up necessary.

You’ll get a brief snapshot of your archetype.

Then if you reply back to this email with your archetype, I’ll send you the full, deeper breakdown of:

* why this pattern formed

* what your body has been trying to protect you from

* and what it actually needs to finally feel safe enough to reconnect to yourself again

Because this work is my real work in the world.

Helping women come home to themselves again because when a woman feels truly connected to herself again, she starts actually moving toward the life, purpose, relationships, and work she knows she is here for.

Much love,

Essence

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