What "Coming Home to Yourself" Really Means (It's Not What You Think)

Yeah, I know. It's a phrase you've heard before. 

It’s being thrown around everywhere right now and I used to resist using this phrase because of that, because all the coaches seemed to be saying it. But I kept coming back to it, because there’s nothing else that reflects what I actually mean. 

So I thought it was time that I explain what “Coming home to yourself,” means to me and not the trendy Instagram or Pinterest version but my version. 

Now I want to start by saying that it's NOT about becoming someone new. Everyone seems to be selling some new version of you and that’s what was causing me resistance. If I tell a woman she needs to become someone new, some part of her is going to hear, I'm not good enough as I am, I know I would and that's the opposite of what I believe and the opposite of what the work I do is about.

You don’t lose yourself overnight. For me, it was years, decades of abandoning myself. One small choice after another led to me getting further and further away from who I was. 

Maybe it started as a kid and learning your needs are too much.

Or you get your heart broken and decide it’s safer to shut down than be open.

Maybe you become a mum and start to believe that everyone else’s needs come before yours.

It doesn’t matter what the reason, all that matters is that years of choices create layers that dim your light making you feel dull, numb, like you’ve forgotten what actually makes you you.

Coming home to yourself is about you coming home to who's been hidden under those layers the whole time.

I'll tell you exactly when I first felt it.

I was sitting in my therapist's office, close to ten years ago now, at what felt like rock bottom. She asked me a simple question: "What do you like to do?"

And I froze.

I could have told her everything my kids liked. Everything my husband needed. Everything on everyone else's calendar. But when it came to me? Nothing. I had no idea. I had spent so long taking care of everyone else that I had genuinely lost track of who I was underneath it all.

That question cracked something open, it gave me a sinking realization that I hadn’t been on my own list, not even close.

I got in the car and drove home and on the way, I stopped at the grocery store and bought myself flowers. They were the brightest ones I could find, I don't even remember what they were called, just that they were loud and colorful and nothing like how I'd been feeling. I brought them inside, put them on the kitchen counter, front and center where I would see them every single day.

It sounds like such a small thing. It was a small thing. But it was the first time in years I had done something just because it would bring me joy, not because it was useful to anyone else. And something about seeing those flowers every morning told me that this was the start of something.

That week, I started what I secretly called my joy list, a blank piece of paper taped inside one of my kitchen cupboards. Any time something made me feel even a flicker of myself again, it went on the list.

Flowers.

A super soft blanket I love to snuggle under.

A new mug, because I love tea and had never once bought myself a "nice" one.

Learning to say no.

Finally telling my husband how I really felt instead of swallowing it, again.

Some of those things took thirty seconds. Some took every ounce of courage I had. But they all did the same work, they let me start feeling again after years of being so shut down I couldn't even name what I liked.

That's what coming home actually looks like. It’s often not big and dramatic. It’s a flower, a blanket, a sentence you finally say out loud.

Coming home to yourself doesn't mean chasing down some younger, freer version of you and trying to live there again. It's not about needing to travel, or escape your life, or go back to who you were before you had kids, a marriage, a mortgage, responsibilities.

The real work is bringing that light into the life you're actually living right now. Into the kitchen. Into the marriage. Into the version of you that's a mother, a wife, a woman rebuilding a business in midlife.

You don't need to escape your life to feel like yourself in it.

That's the whole shift, not becoming new, not going backward but remembering who you've always been underneath the layers, and letting her light fully, finally show up and shine. As the woman you were always meant to be.

If you’re feeling that numbness, that not quite sure who I am feeling, that sense that you've been on everyone's list but your own? I know it intimately. Just start with one small thing today. A flower. Five minutes to yourself. A walk. Something.

If you are ready to begin, I’ve put together a free five-day audio series called Coming Home, it’s just five to seven minutes a day, just for you, to start finding your way back to yourself.

Coming Home - Click Here

It's time to start shining your light again, the world needs it and so do you.

Mel x