Well, it’s perhaps cliché and will no doubt be blogged more eloquently elsewhere, but hands down the most important thing I’ve ever found was my Self. 

It wasn’t easy.  I was raised to place my value in what I could do for others and took that to mean I wasn’t even allowed to have a Self.  That having a self was selfish, and therefore prohibited and wrong.  I think I was about 27 or 28 when I figured out, well that’s crap!  and began the search for self.   Turns out my Self wanted things that were quite different than I had expected: she wanted to be a writer, for starters.  Selfish self!  When I’d gone to school for very different things (things that could translate to what I could do for others)!                 

Having located her, I still sometimes take her for granted, until someone or something comes along and I start to feel that boxed in sense of external expectations or declarations.  I still have to remind myself that what I do for others is not my measuring stick for life, even though that’s not always a bad stick.  Living life as me is the only evaluation I really need.  Was I Christin today?  My inner selfish-ometer struggles through that question as old ways of being still have a residue on my soul.   But ultimately, what good would it be if I tried to be someone else, or no one at all, or did not live life like I had a Self, just like you do, and you do, and you do.