What You Put On

We think about it every morning. What the day requires. What the room calls for. Sometimes it starts with a feeling. For me, it starts with my socks. Either way, we know. We have always known how to dress for the day we are actually having.

Most of us are very good at this. We have been doing it our whole lives.

This month, we spent some time looking at the stories we carry. The ones that arrived before we had a say. The ones we built from borrowed evidence. The ones that became so familiar we stopped noticing they were there at all. And somewhere in all of that, a question surfaced that I would like us to sit with for one more week before we move on.

What if the stories were not the only thing we picked up along the way?

What if some of what we are carrying is not a story at all? What if it is something we learned to wear? Something we reached for so many times it started to feel like skin. Something that fit the room so well for so long that we forgot we put it on in the first place.

I am not talking about what is hanging in our closet. I am talking about what we show the world. The version of ourselves we assembled before we knew we were assembling anything. The one who learned very early what worked and what did not. The one that got very good, maybe excellent, at showing up exactly right for exactly the right situations. The one who made it look easy, even when nothing about it was easy.

We know exactly what to put on for every room we walk into. We have been doing it so long that it feels like second nature. The question is whether we chose it or whether it chose us.

That is where we are going next.

Not to take anything away. Not to strip anything down. Just to look at what we put on. To ask whether we chose it or whether it was handed to us before we knew enough to ask. And to find out whether it still fits.

Because here is what we know about carrying things we never examined. They get heavy. Not all at once. Just slowly, one ordinary day at a time, until one day we reach for what we always reach for and notice something we cannot quite name. A weight that was not there before. Or maybe it was always there, and we are just finally tired enough to feel it.

We do not have to know what it is yet. We just have to be willing to look.

We will start looking next week. If this landed for you, send it to one woman you thought of while you were reading. She will know why you did.

Find out where you are in your returning right now at thereturningproject.com/journey. The workbook is at thereturningproject.com/let-it-stand.

The Returning Project is a space where women reclaim who they truly are, beyond who they were told to be. New posts every Sunday.

Inward. Onward. Go.