Three Inch Nine-Patch Block

I once heard a therapist describing how he works with recovering drug addicts. He tells them to ignore the years – sometimes it’s decades – of lies they’ve been telling themselves about themselves. That they’re trash. That they’re not worth saving. He asks them to remember what they were like when they were children; their hopes, their passions, their potential. He tells them that’s who they REALLY are. They just need to rediscover themselves. It reminded me of an Emily MacDowell quote: “’Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”