Tales I Never Told Myself

Story of Golden Locks by Seymour Joseph Guy

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Why is it that we can rise like the wind behind the sails of others—our friends, our partners, even strangers—and yet, when it comes to our own quiet longings, we vanish?

You believe in them, without hesitation.

And then, with barely a breath between, you’ll shrug off your own hopes like they’re silly things. You'll talk yourself small. You’ll smile that forced smile people wear when they’ve grown used to not being seen.

Not because you lack ambition.

Not because you don't care.

It’s because somewhere, long ago and softly, you learned not to root for yourself.

We’re taught to be generous with our faith in others.

To hold space.

To love unconditionally.

But few of us are taught how to hold that same tenderness for the girl inside—the one who still remembers how to wish.

And over time, it becomes a kind of forgetting.

Not dramatic.

Just a slow fading.

Like mist dissolving from morning fields.

There are stories we inherit.

Some are whispered.

Some, we gather just by watching—how our mothers lived, how praise was rationed, how pride was punished, how needing too much meant being too much.

And so we learned to be good.

Quiet.

Capable.

We learned to applaud others while silently folding our own dreams into ever smaller paper shapes, tucking them away for a someday that never quite arrives.

This isn’t about blame.

It’s about noticing.

About gently turning over the stones we’ve left untouched inside ourselves and asking—

What still lives there?

What did I stop wanting?

What did I once believe I could become?

What story did I begin to write, but never finish?

Taking yourself seriously isn’t some performance.

It’s not a hashtag.

It’s a quiet, sacred thing.

It happens in the stillness—when no one’s watching.

When you dare to believe your voice might matter.

That your work, your words, your wounds are worth tending.

It’s letting yourself take up space without apology.

Speaking your ideas even if your voice shakes.

Backing yourself the way you’ve backed everyone else.

It’s giving up the need to be perfect and choosing instead to be real.

And if it feels hard—it’s because it is.

Unlearning takes time.

Healing isn't linear.

You’ll falter.

You’ll second-guess.

But there is grace in the trying.

You don’t need to become someone new.

You just need to come back to the parts of you that you left behind.

Some nights, you might still feel like you’re on the outside of your own life. Watching it happen around you while your hands stay folded in your lap.

But even then, even in that stillness, the old stories can start to shift.

Speak kindly to yourself in the mirror, just once.

Write messy things, for no one to read.

Say no, and survive.

Say yes, and bloom.

Remember: you are a story worth telling.

Not because you’ve earned it.

Not because you’ve done everything right.

But because you are still here.

Alive.

Wanting.

Beginning again.

Not loudly.

Not all at once.

But beginning.