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I Didn’t Know How Lost I Was Until I Went Back Home đź‡đź‡ą
I Went Back Home and Found Myself Again
There’s a difference between resting and being restored. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I went back home. Not physically. Not even mentally. But in a deeper way. The kind of tired that comes from constantly being “on,” from adapting, performing, adjusting, surviving.
And then I went back to Haiti. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to be anything. I just was.
I don’t think I even realized how much of myself I had been carrying in tension. How much of my life had started to feel like something I had to manage instead of something I was actually living. Because when I got back home, everything felt easy. Not perfect. Not ideal.
But natural. Familiar. Like my body could finally exhale.
There’s something about Haiti that I can’t fully explain unless you’ve experienced it for yourself.
It’s more than a place. It’s the only place where I don’t feel like I have to perform. Where I don’t have to overthink who I am, how I’m coming across, or whether I’m being understood.
I don’t have to prove anything or become anything. I get to be. And I think that’s what I didn’t realize I needed. Not a break. Not a reset. But a return.
When God put it on my heart earlier this year to come back home, I’ll be honest, I thought I just needed to see my family again. I didn’t realize how much I needed it. I didn’t realize how much it would shift something in me.
Or how deeply it would restore parts of me that I didn’t even know were still missing. Because for a while, I’ve been trying to build a life, build myself, build everything. And somewhere in that process, I lost the version of me that felt the most natural. The version of me that wasn’t trying so hard.
The version of me that just existed without questioning herself.
I remember when I first got there. The moment I saw my house for the first time in eight years, I felt it instantly. Like something in me unclenched. Like a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying had been lifted off of me.
I felt light.
And then I walked inside. I saw my family. I was back in my home. And there’s no perfect way to explain what that feels like. But everything in me just settled.
Waking up to the sound of roosters early in the morning. Seeing neighbors outside. Being surrounded by my little cousins, kids running around, life happening all around me.
Doing simple things, like laundry by hand, going to the flea market, just existing in the rhythm of everyday life. There was no rush. No pressure. No need for perfection.
And that’s when it hit me. I was free. Not in a loud, dramatic way. But in the most real, grounded way.
I was just myself. Fully.
And I think that’s what shifted something in me. Because as much as I’ve been on this journey of becoming, as much as I thought I had found myself again, there were still parts of me that were holding back.
Still small pieces shaped by other people’s opinions. Moments where I felt uncomfortable in my own body, moments where I questioned myself.
But being back home stripped all of that away. I didn’t think about how I looked, or question how I was being perceived. I wasn’t adjusting myself to fit anything or anyone.
I was just comfortable. With all of me. The good. The imperfect. The parts I’m still working through. All of it. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel the need to change any of it in that moment.
And that kind of freedom stays with you.
Because now, moving forward, I know what it feels like to be fully myself.
And I don’t want to lose that again. Being back home reminded me of the little girl I used to be. The one with wild dreams. Who didn’t second-guess herself. The one who didn’t shrink or overthink or wait for permission.
And that’s the version of me I’m carrying forward.
Not as motivation. But as truth. Haiti didn’t change me. It reminded me who I was before I started trying to become everything else.
As my trip comes to an end, it feels bittersweet. But not in a heavy way. In a full way. I feel so full of everything this experience gave me.
Not just love. Not just happiness. But peace. Clarity.
A sense of grounding that I didn’t even realize I was missing. I feel stronger, lighter. I feel like myself again. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m searching for anything.
I feel whole.
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Why I Stopped Needing to Be Understood (And Found Peace)
The Obsession With Being Understood
For a long time, I was obsessed with being understood. If someone misunderstood me, I felt the need to correct it.
When someone formed the wrong impression, I had to explain.
If someone questioned my choices, I told my side of the story.I could not tolerate being misinterpreted. So I overexplained everything. My reasoning. My intentions. My context.
I believed that if I communicated clearly enough, people would understand. I held that belief for a long time. Or at least that’s what I thought. When misunderstandings happened, I assumed it was because I hadn’t explained myself well enough.
So I explained more.
The Moment Everything Changed
But after going through one of the hardest seasons of my life and losing parts of myself along the way, something shifted.
That season forced me to rebuild my life from the inside out. It forced me to confront who I was, who I had become, and who I wanted to be moving forward.
That is what this journey of becoming has been for me: learning what I need to release to grow into the woman I am meant to be. And one of the things I realized I had to let go of was the obsession with being understood.
For most of my life, I believed clarity would solve everything. If I explained my intentions well enough, people would see my heart. They would understand my decisions.
But the truth is, people often see what they want to see. They believe what they are prepared to believe. And no amount of explaining can control that.
At some point, I had to ask myself: how much of my energy was being spent trying to manage other people’s perceptions?
Because when your life revolves around being understood, you are constantly performing. Constantly explaining and constantly trying to correct narratives that may never change.
And you cannot operate at your highest potential when your energy is tied to other people’s interpretations of your life.
What Letting Go Actually Looks Like
Letting go of that obsession does not mean living carelessly. It does not mean doing whatever you want and dismissing the impact of your choices. For me, it meant returning to my core values.
Keeping God at the center.
Moving with honesty.
Acting with integrity.
Checking my motives and making sure my conscience is clear.When those things are in place, the need for universal understanding loses its power. That does not mean being misunderstood suddenly becomes easy.
It still hurts sometimes, especially when the misunderstanding comes from people you love, or from people you expected to see you clearly.
That is when the urge to explain becomes the strongest. But I have learned that protecting your peace sometimes means saying less.
Not every situation requires a full explanation.
Not every misunderstanding needs to be corrected.
Not every opinion deserves your energy.Sometimes the most peaceful choice is to let people hold their perception and move on. And on the other side of that decision, something unexpected happens.
You find peace.
You start making decisions from alignment rather than approval. You begin living from conviction instead of constantly seeking validation.
When God is at the center, and your intentions are honest, a kind of peace settles into your spirit. People may misunderstand you. Others may judge you. Some may never fully see your heart.
And that is okay. Maybe they will understand one day. Or they never will. Either way, you can still move forward with clarity and peace.
Because the moment you stop needing to be understood by everyone is the moment you finally become free to live the life you were meant to build.
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The Moment I realized Motivation was never coming
There is a moment that comes after you’ve lost everything you thought your life would look like.
After the grief, the denial. The endless conversations in your head, trying to make sense of what happened.
You wake up one day, and reality is just… there. Unchanged. Unmoved. Waiting for you. And you are faced with a choice.
You can keep waiting until you feel ready to rebuild your life. Or you can start moving, even if you don’t feel like it. I always believed motivation should come first.
I thought I would just wake up one day feeling inspired again. That clarity would arrive. That the right mindset would appear, and then I would begin rebuilding.
But that day never came.
Instead, there were days when I laid in bed scrolling on my phone for hours. Days when I avoided people. Days when I knew what I should be doing but felt completely disconnected from the version of myself who used to do those things.
I was just empty.
And the more days that passed like that, the more I started to hate the person I was becoming. Not in a self-destructive way. In a “this is not who I want to be” kind of way. At some point, I had to face something uncomfortable:
Motivation wasn’t coming.
No wave of inspiration was going to save me. No perfect moment was going to arrive.
If my life were going to change, it would have to change through action. Even small actions. Especially small actions.
Around that time, I had an idea to start this blog. I knew I wanted it to live on a real website, not just social media. The problem was that I hated web design.
I wasn’t good at it. I found it frustrating. It was the kind of task I normally avoided.
So I decided that would be the first thing I forced myself to do.
I didn’t give myself a strict deadline. I just made a decision: I was going to build it.
Some days I worked on it. Some days I didn’t touch it at all. There were weeks when I avoided my computer entirely. But somehow I always came back to it.
Little by little, page by page, the website started to take shape. And something interesting happened. The more I showed up to work on it, the more connected I felt to the project. The more connected I felt, the more excited I became.
Motivation didn’t come first. Action did.
That realization changed the way I approach discipline. I stopped waiting to feel like doing the work. I started doing the work anyway.
But I also had to confront another uncomfortable truth about myself. I had a pattern of starting things and not finishing them.
Getting excited about an idea, putting energy into it for a while, and then letting it slowly fade away. If this blog were something God was leading me to build, I could not treat it like another unfinished idea.
I had to steward it well. So my prayer changed.
Instead of asking God to make me feel motivated, I asked Him to help me become disciplined enough to take care of what had been placed on my heart.
That shift changed everything.
Even now, I don’t show up at 100% every day. Some days I have energy. Some days I don’t.
But I built small systems that keep me moving forward. Every day, I commit to doing at least one thing in 3 areas of my life.
For my brand, it might be writing, editing, or even simple research. On low-energy days, research becomes my default action because it still moves the project forward.
For my health, the standard is exercise, hydration, and nourishing food. But on harder days, the minimum might be drinking enough water or simply stopping eating after a certain hour.
For my spiritual life, I read something every day. Even if it’s just the verse of the day, these actions are small. But they are consistent.
And consistency rebuilds a life much faster than motivation ever will. The truth is, motivation is unreliable. It shows up when things feel exciting and disappears when life becomes difficult.
Discipline, on the other hand, is quiet. It’s often unremarkable. But it carries you through seasons where feelings are not enough.
Looking back now, I’m grateful motivation never came. Because if it had, I might have continued believing that progress depends on how you feel. Instead, I learned something better. You don’t need to feel ready to rebuild your life.
You just need to begin.
