Dear Kiantha: Give yourself space to hear your own voice

Dear Kiantha,

I turned 34 two weeks ago. This feeling came over me of still not completely knowing myself. I have never had to fully depend on myself for anything and that is starting to feel like a blind spot. Where do I start in finding myself and my own voice?

Dear Friend,

Sometimes you have to let go of everything you’ve come to know to find yourself. Everything and everyone. Not literally everyone, but the people you have become accustomed to leaning on for their opinions and advice for your life.

The first step to finding yourself is finding your voice. Having a strong support system in our family and friends from a young age in most cases is a good thing. It allows us to have the voices and opinions of others to rely on. It provides us safety net for when we are faced with challenging decisions in life.

Having strong support systems can also have the negative effect of not allowing us to develop our own voice, beliefs and moral compass. If we have not had the opportunities to flex these muscles, how would they become developed?

The time comes in all of our lives when we feel called to ourselves, to our own voice. It sounds like that time has come for you. Your spirit is inviting you to embrace your own maturity and ability to protect and sustain itself. Thankfully, you have had the support of a strong family-and-friends circle to guide you this far. The knowledge you have gained from them will certainly serve as bumpers for you as you create your own path to self-reliance and discovery.

The best version of you will be a combination of who you determine you want to be, who you are called to be and what you were taught to be by those people who made investments in your life. As you continue to discover who you are at your core, know that should you find things about yourself that you don’t like. You and only you have the power to change them. How exciting is that?

May your self-exploration identify all the beautiful parts of you. I will be rooting you on from the sidelines.

Soul to soul,

Kiantha

Dear Kiantha can be read Fridays in The Spokesman-Review. To read this column in Spanish, visit www.spokesman.com. To submit a question, email DearKiantha@gmail.com.