There are lies so old, we mistake them for truth.
They pass down like heirlooms, not in words, but in gestures.
In the way our mothers held their breath.
In the way our fathers looked away.
In the silence between generations.

These lies live in the body before they ever make it to language.

Mine whispered:
You are only lovable when you are small.
When you don’t ask for too much.
When you shape yourself to fit others' hunger.

For years, I thought this was humility.
Later, I called it trauma.
Now, I know it was an inheritance,
wrapped in survival, passed in prayer, and ready to be released.

The Lie, and Where It Began

This lie didn't begin with me.
It may not have even begun with my mother, or hers.

It came through bloodlines marked by poverty, survival economics, famine, war, exile, assimilation, and religion…,
and all the survival stories that taught silence as virtue,
self-erasure as love,
and exhaustion as proof of worth.

But not all of it was inherited.
Some of it, I crafted myself.

From moments when I misunderstood rejection as a reflection of my worth.
From quiet compromises I made to feel safe.
From choices I didn’t know were choices at all.

It was reinforced in classrooms, jobs, friendships, partnerships,
spaces where I learned to adapt, to please, to shrink.
It was echoed in media, mentors, and a culture that called over-functioning a virtue.

The lie was never spoken aloud, that would’ve made it easier to challenge.
It was embedded in expectations, in side-eyes, in praised restraint.
In what was withheld more than what was said.

And eventually… in my own mouth.
In my own relationships.
In the way I told myself not to need.

How It Lived in Me

The lie settled into my body like smoke in drapes.
It clung to my shoulders in rooms where I wanted to speak.
It twisted my gut when I tried to ask for help.
It made me perform softness instead of inhabiting it.

It told me to earn love with usefulness.
To stay quiet to be seen as wise.
To disappear just enough to be adored.

And I obeyed.
Until I didn’t.

The Sacred Recognition

Recognition doesn’t always come with clarity.
Sometimes it comes with exhaustion.

I got tired of shrinking.
Tired of editing my joy, my brilliance, my rage.

The moment I recognized the lie, it felt like looking into a mirror I didn’t know was dirty
and suddenly seeing my own face clearly for the first time.

It wasn’t guilt that met me there.
It was grief.
And oddly, relief.

Because once you name the lie,
you can un-spell it.

🔥 The Smoke Offering

So, I gathered the fragments.
The phrases I repeated.
The postures I contorted into.
The apologies I gave just for existing too brightly.

I wrote them down.
Whispered each one into a scrap of paper.
Folded it with breath and tenderness.
Lit the corner. Watched the flame catch.

And as the smoke rose, I whispered:

“You are no longer needed.
I thank you for how you tried to protect me.
But I belong to the truth now.
Go — back to the stars.
Be cleansed. Be rewritten.”

The Ethers took it.

Not with fire and thunder.
But with silence.
With space.

And in that space,
something new began to bloom.

🌿 What Remains

What remains now is not a void but a garden.
Even a chaos garden, where you threw all the seeds and allowed them to grow where they may.
A soft, unfamiliar spaciousness in the place where the lie once lived.

I don’t always know what truth will grow here.
But I know this:
I’m no longer feeding the roots of something that never belonged to me.

I’m learning to speak before I shrink.
To rest without guilt.
To be too much and let that be holy.

💭 Ritual for the Reader: Return What Was Never Yours

If you’re ready, here’s a ritual to release the lie, whether it was passed down through generations, shaped by the world around you, or formed in the quiet moments you forgot to question.

• Write the lie on a piece of paper.
• Thank it. Name its purpose…., be it protection, approval, safety, or something else that once felt necessary.
• Then tear it into small pieces and toss it into the waste bin.
• As you do, say:
  “I return this to the Ethers.
  May it be cleansed, transmuted, and rewritten.
  I choose truth now. I choose me.”

Then breathe.
Feel your body without the weight of it.

You do not need the lie to be whole.

Closing Blessing

May the ashes of what no longer serves you become the soil of your becoming.
May every truth you reclaim root deeper than the lie ever reached.
And may you remember — again and again — that freedom is your birthright.

With all of my love,

-J