Am I Honoring All of Who I Am? cont....

As a young woman, learning to honoring the many aspects of myself became critical for me because I was still building my confidence and learning who I was as a woman, and an adult. I was also getting in touch with my soul, my personality, my likes, my strengths and weaknesses.

As a young mother, I uncovered that this was an even more important lesson for me because I needed to teach my children how to love and accept themselves.

During my exploration, I found myself being judged, rejected, approved and categorized by what other people, institutions and cultures believed was correct. Now the average person would say, "well, what other people think or say should not matter-be who you are", or some other cliche-ish saying. But, I had not grown to that point yet....

I also have to acknowledge that my safety net didn't help my situation any. I held onto plenty of guilt and shame, self-imposed cages and boxes; a need to live within other people's comfort zones and conform to other's ideals and standards in order to gain their acceptance, I found myself people pleasing...