Where do you (go to) find yourself?

Maybe it’s a sign of being in mid-life, but I have recently started to find/rediscover myself. It sounds such a strange thing but I wonder how many of us grow up ‘adapting’ ourselves into people/roles that deliver us with that human need for acceptance and love.
Parents, friends, colleagues don’t mean to impose conditions on us for feeling accepted, wanted and loved-yet most human beings manoeuvre themselves for spots that provide this safety and human need. This learned behaviour takes over the way we live life and along the way-many of us lose ourselves,some forever.

In contrast-notice how often/infrequently you come across people who stand out for being ‘comfortable in their own skin’, or ‘grounded’....like the Mandela’s, Obama’s etc. They don’t have to be high profile, public figures-we find these Obama’s amongst us in our day to day lives too-those we secretly envy or openly admire for this trait.

So- how have I found myself rediscovering myself? ....it’s through being a bit more internally aware of what makes me feel good about myself and what seems more foreign. Gravitating towards and acknowledging the need I have to attend to and live by what I believe in and am- is not just liberating and powerful (giver of strength and energy as opposed to ‘power’: authority), but insightful and self-fulfilling too. Being in touch with oneself and true to oneself is freedom at its most primal level.

I have a friend who has fulfilled the role of good daughter, wife, friend, mother etc etc. She is unaware of the reason she experiences a vacuum inside, the lost person within-who doesn’t even know to search for themself. The mirror they see themselves in is always someone else’s-never their own.
That is what I have recently come up in front of-my own mirror. I don’t yet see everything clearly, I don’t necessarily like everything I see, but where I find myself is-in front of it more often and regularly and every time I come away more comfortable knowing I know myself a bit more.