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I spent thirty years looking for someone to hand me the answer.
First, it was God and the church ladies in the back pews. Then it was the bottom of a bottle. Finally, it was TikTok manifestation gurus promising that positive thoughts alone could transform my life. Each promised the same thing: follow the formula, perform correctly, and you’ll finally be enough.
Spoiler alert: none of them worked. Not because they were all wrong, but because I was asking the wrong question.
I wasn’t looking for tools to understand myself. I was looking for permission to keep running from who I actually was.
The Performance Starts Early
Sunday mornings in a small Methodist church off the beaten path in the Bible Belt taught me my first survival skill: performance. The congregation of old judgmental biddies lining the back pews carried expectations of holiness that felt impossible to meet. Be pure. Don’t question. Keep the whispers away.
I was just a kid, starting around six years old. That critical window when you’re most impressionable, when patterns get carved into your subconscious and carried forward for decades. I learned quickly: my true self wasn’t good enough. Put on a show. Be the perfect, non-questioning individual everyone expected.
When you have a single mother who marries into a godly family, you mind your Ps and Qs. You learn to keep the peace, to not bring attention to yourself, to pick your battles because you can’t appease everyone. It seemed harmless at the time, just survival tactics.
What I didn’t know was that I was learning to abandon myself. To split into two versions: the real me, buried and unacceptable, and the performed me, crafted for everyone else’s comfort.
It took almost thirty years to realize what that cost me.
Trading One Crutch for Another
They say you’re the equivalent of the top five people you surround yourself with. When you’re a kid, that’s whoever you live with. My early training in performance-for-appearance found its perfect companion in drinking.
The relaxer. The liquid courage. The answer to releasing my inner ‘demons.’ It was acceptable, even common in society’s norms, especially in my hometown where plenty of others also found it as an escape route. I could finally be myself, as long as I was drunk.
For years, I continued doing what I knew best. My version of thriving, which was really just surviving. I moved every few years, creating my own challenges, repeating the same patterns. New city, new serving gig, searching for some kind of purpose. It was the same thing over and over, with the same culprit numbing the turmoil.
Eventually, I chased my childhood dream and got my hair license, creating what I thought was my own purpose. Unfortunately, that came after a decade of practicing being a functional alcoholic and weed smoker. I’d learned to balance ‘the release’ while being a productive member of society.
What I hadn’t learned was how to navigate life without the reliance.
The Hollow Victory
Less than a decade after gaining my hair license, I fulfilled my childhood dream: I owned my own salon. My name on the sign. Keys in my hand. Everything I thought I’d been working toward.
And I felt absolutely nothing.
Actually, that’s not true. I felt hollow. Disappointed. Confused. I’d expected to feel like I’d made it, like everything after would be sunshine and rainbows. I thought I’d climbed my mountain and the view from the top would be peace.
Instead, it felt like a slap in the face. I realized I hadn’t reached the summit, I’d only hit a foothill. The real terrain stretched out before me like an unmarked map, and I had no idea how to navigate it.
The timing was bittersweet in the cruelest way. Just before achieving this dream, I’d been forced into sobriety for legal reasons. When the numbing effect of pushing through no matter what was no longer an option, the real questions started surfacing: What’s the point? Who am I without my crutches?
I’d spent years making due with what was available, teaching myself ‘it is what it is,’ relying on my means to adapt to discomfort. Now I was sober, supposedly successful, and completely lost.
Enter the Algorithm
With a bad taste from church spirituality and no substances to numb the confusion, I was desperate for answers. A friend suggested promoting my business through social media. TikTok became my new addiction.
Suddenly, I was exposed to perspectives completely different from my Bible Belt upbringing. Greek gods and goddesses. Witchcraft. Energy work. The power of positive thought, manifestation, and affirmations. It felt like a breath of fresh air, new ways of understanding the higher power I’d always sensed was there.
I dove in headfirst, not realizing I was doing the exact same thing I’d done with church and alcohol: looking for an external fix to an internal problem.
The algorithm fed me what I craved. ‘If you’re seeing this, it’s meant for you.’ Videos of people living their dream lives, claiming they’d manifested it all with positive thinking. Messages about raising your vibration, choosing love over fear, attracting abundance.
Coming from a background of ‘just work harder and you’ll succeed,’ the idea that all I had to do was think good thoughts felt like a golden ticket. A welcomed relief for my desperate need for instant gratification. I was sober now. I had a new arsenal of tools and ideas. Surely this was the answer I’d been missing.
I didn’t research further than quick clips on TikTok. I didn’t question the hooks or the ‘quick success’ lingo. I just consumed, desperate and willing to believe.
All In on the New Performance
I dropped everyone I knew and migrated toward people in the same spiritual mindset circuit. Joined groups of like-mindedness. Took every message that surfaced to heart. I even drank ayahuasca with a group of strangers in Costa Rica.
I told myself what hadn’t worked before was evidence enough to experiment with this new way of thinking. What’s the worst that could happen? I’d always gotten myself out of trouble before. I could trust myself to handle whatever came up if it turned sour.
For two to three years, I fully committed to what I believed spirituality was: being peaceful, solely thinking positively, keeping my energy at a high frequency to create the magnetic pull of all good things. I repeated affirmations. I visualized. I waited for my purpose to be revealed through signs and synchronicities.
I’d say ‘I am worthy’ a hundred times in the mirror, then shrink when it came time to actually ask for what I needed. The affirmation didn’t fail, it revealed the real work I’d been avoiding. I had to actually DO things that proved to myself I was worth taking up space.
But I wasn’t ready to see that yet. I just kept waiting for spirit to hand me the roadmap to salvation.
When the Promise Breaks
And then, slowly, frustration set in.
After years of positive thinking and manifestation work, my life hadn’t magically transformed. The big dreams hadn’t materialized. I was still struggling with the same patterns, just with different language around them.
The irritation hit me like a wave. Pure frustration and anger at noticing how much I was still playing myself down, still performing. The disgust of watching others sit on their high horses giving advice on ‘how to be better’ when they clearly weren’t taking it themselves. The rage at myself for not listening to my own ideas and blindly following what others said worked best.
I scrolled through another post about ‘choosing high vibes’ and wanted to throw my phone. Where were these people when their lives fell apart? Did they really never feel angry, disappointed, scared? Or were they just better at performing than I was, trading church lady judgment for spiritual superiority?
The truth that finally broke through: I’d been spiritually bypassing my real issues. Using manifestation and positive thinking the same way I’d used alcohol. As a way to avoid actually feeling what I felt, facing what I feared, and meeting who I really was.
The Real Work Begins
3 years in and now life has been about unlearning almost everything I thought spirituality meant.
I’m learning that the full range of emotions—not just the ‘high vibe’ ones—is a healthy, human part of being alive. That fake affirmations do nothing unless deep down you truly believe them, and you can’t believe them unless you give yourself evidence through action.
The uncomfortable truth: there is no fast pass. No guru has all the answers to what my success looks like. Spirit doesn’t hand you a roadmap, it gives you ingredients to bake your own cake.
While I was waiting for answers, this whole experience was actually training me to recognize my surface-level tendencies. My conformist ways of performing for others never allowed me to dig deeper into who I truly was. The doubt that I wasn’t good enough just being me had created low self-esteem and unrecognizable self-worth. (Key obstacles to having self-trust in creating a future that didn’t revolve around just surviving.)
I’m now working on the real fundamentals: learning boundaries, meditation, intuition, self-trust, self-worth. Actually listening to myself instead of shrinking to fit someone else’s picture. Allowing myself to be weird, opinionated, to think for myself. Filling my own cup before worrying about everyone else’s expectations.
Small acts of courage became my new evidence: asking for a day off, naming my price, saying ‘that doesn’t work for me.’ Each one proof against the story I’d been telling myself for thirty years.
What Freedom Actually Looks Like
Freedom now looks like breaking down the walls of being perfect for everyone else. Accepting that I am me. Not perfectly awesome, but with genuine intent to help others when I can.
Freedom is allowing myself to fail and being okay with getting back up to try again. It’s knowing there’s no end in sight, no final destination where everything is ‘figured out.’ It’s all about what you make of the process you’re in.
I believe in morals and values. I believe energy matters, but that energy comes from our inner beliefs, not forced positivity. I think believing in something higher can be inspiring and motivational, but there can always be too much of a good thing (even spirituality.)
People are meant to figure out themselves, to discover what they truly desire rather than be told what they should think. We’re all connected, but it’s ultimately up to each of us which path we want to take. That’s what makes the world interesting and unique.
The Lesson I Didn’t Want
My spiritual journey didn’t turn ‘sour’ because it was wrong or a waste of time. It turned uncomfortable because it finally stopped giving me what I wanted (quick answers) and started giving me what I needed, a mirror.
I’m not dogging anyone fully invested in their beliefs. I’m not saying what works for one person should be the answer to everyone else’s struggles. What I am saying is there’s no telling what you’ll uncover once you get tired of your own patterns and take action in a new direction.
You give yourself permission to create your own path rather than wait for what you don’t want to be handed to you.
My habit of making a crutch out of things that should only be supportive tools—church, substances, even spirituality—has been one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. Each one opened a door to the unknown. Each one showed me another layer of the performance I’d been running.
The real spiritual work isn’t about being perfect, thinking positively all the time, or manifesting your dream life. It’s about finally being brave enough to stop abandoning yourself for everyone else’s comfort.
It’s about meeting who you actually are; messy, opinionated, imperfect, and real.
And then giving yourself permission to be that person, no performance required.
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Reborn MeatSuit 
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