When You've Forgotten What You Actually Want

Something has been showing up for me everywhere this past week, and I’ve been trying to make note when this happens because there’s a reason for it.

Last week, it was on the back of a stranger's t-shirt. In the last three fiction books I finished. In a blog post I clicked on by accident.

The message kept finding me, in different forms, from different directions:

Love over fear. Only always.

I don't think that's random.

And it connects directly to what I want to talk about today - because most of us who feel disconnected from what we actually want are, at the root of it, living in a low-grade state of fear. Fear that what we want is too much. That it's too late. That if we look too closely, we might find out something we can't un-know.

So we stop asking. And the days go flat.

What it actually means to come back to yourself

Let’s get specific, because this phrase can float into territory that feels abstract and a little untethered from real life when in fact, it’s entwined with day-to-day life.

This isn’t about finding your cosmic purpose or receiving some grand revelation from Life (though, listen… I would LOVE that myself!). It's simpler, and in some ways harder.

It's about learning to recognize what is true for you - what genuinely pulls your attention, what lights something up behind your sternum, what you keep circling back to even when it doesn't make practical sense. It's about learning to read the map your own life has been drawing for you, whether you've been paying attention or not.

Your soul doesn't shout. It leaves breadcrumbs.

The question is whether you've been too busy, too tired, or too afraid to follow them.

What gets in the way

Three things tend to show up for the women I work with - and honestly, for me too.

1. The noise is very loud.

Daily life is full of what needs doing. The inbox. The appointments. The people who need things from you. It's not that you're lazy or uninspired - it's that the signal from your inner life is quiet, and the demands of the outer life are constant. You have to create conditions to hear it. Most of us haven't been taught how to do that.

2. Other people's needs have been mistaken for your own.

This one is subtle and goes deep. After years - sometimes decades - of orienting yourself around what other people need, want, or approve of, your own desires can become genuinely hard to locate. You've been good at reading the room. You've been good at being needed. What you actually want has had to wait. And somewhere along the way, it got hard to remember what it sounded like.

3. You've learned not to trust the pull.

If you've followed something that mattered to you before and had it not work out - if you've been told you were naive, impractical, or too much - you may have learned to override the signal before it even fully forms. That self-protective layer is doing its job. It's also the thing keeping you flat.

What this isn't

This isn't about blowing up your life.

I want to say that clearly, because I think some people hesitate to look too closely at what they actually want because they're afraid of what they'll find. That if they let themselves want something, they'll have to do something drastic. Quit the job. Leave the relationship. Burn it all down.

Sometimes that's true. But most of the time, what I see is something quieter and more workable. People finding their way back to things they'd set down. Reclaiming small pieces of themselves that had gone underground. Starting to inhabit their days instead of just managing them.

That's the territory.

A place to do this work

I made the Discover What Your Soul Really Wants workbook because I needed it and couldn't find anything like it. It's not a personality quiz. It's not a values exercise that gives you a list of five words and sends you on your way. It's diagnostic - it walks you through the places where your soul has already been dropping clues, and it helps you start to see the pattern.

You can work through it on your own. But twice a year, I host a live co-working call where we do the work together - in real time, in community, with me there to guide the process and answer questions.

The next call is Sunday, June 28th, at 1:00pm Eastern.

If you're reading this in real time: The workbook is $22 and your purchase includes access to the live call on June 28th.

If you're finding this after June 28th: The live call has already happened, but the workbook is still available and works beautifully on its own. I run live calls roughly twice a year. The next one is tentatively December 2026 or January 2027. The best way to hear about it when registration opens is to be on the newsletter - you can sign up free here.

One more thing

That message that kept finding me this week - Love over fear - I've been sitting with it as it applies here.

Most of what gets in the way of knowing what you want is fear, wearing different costumes. Fear of wanting too much. Fear of being disappointed. Fear of what it would mean to actually claim something for yourself.

The antidote isn’t bravery, exactly. It's curiosity. It's a willingness to ask the question, even when you're not sure you'll like the answer.

What if your soul has been trying to find you as much as you've been looking for it?

That's the thread worth pulling.