​​The Cage, the Mask and the Call to Fly​

This is my compassionate love note to the women who are beginning to stir...  You’ve worn the mask for so long… it almost feels like your face.
  The good girl mask.
  The high-functioning woman mask.
  The polished, responsible, keep-it-all-together mask.

 

You know how to perform.  You know how to survive.  You’ve mastered the art of pretending —  of looking fine while quietly dying inside.  But lately… something is shifting.  It’s uncomfortable. Subtle. Disorienting.

 

A quiet whisper from within… or a roar.  A rising sense that says:  “This isn’t it. This isn’t me.”  This is the beginning of awakening.  And no — you’re not crazy.  You’re beginning to notice.  You’re starting to see the roles you’ve been playing, the beliefs you’ve inherited, the life you’ve built to belong — but that no longer feels true.

 

This is where self-awareness begins: when you turn toward yourself with curiosity instead of judgment.  When you start to wonder,

 

  Who am I, really… underneath all of this?
  What stories have I been living that were never mine to carry?

 

You’ve lived inside a cage that looks nice — a clean house, a full calendar, a curated life.  Your “Facebook self” looks successful.  But inside?  You feel numb.  Tired.  Heavy. Resentful.   Lost.  And truthfully?  You don’t even know where you went.  Or where you want to go.

 

A nice cage is still a cage.  Safety can be suffocating.  Stability can be a disguise.  And survival… is not the same as living.  You haven’t forgotten how to fly — you were just trained to forget the sky.  You may feel ashamed for wanting more.  You may feel scared that if you stop pretending, it will all fall apart.

 

But I want you to know this:  You are not broken.  You've been programmed: you are awakening from these hypnotic programs placed into you before you had agency.  You are shedding the layers that were never truly yours — that’s all.   If you think about it this way: there are 8 billion individuals on this planet: no two lenses are the same; yet we are personally responsible for the one we carry.  Our perceptions are shaped by our culture, conditioning, trauma and story: it shaped us.   But they are NOT fixed.   We each have a responsibility to examine what shaped us, to question the filters through which we see, and to own the way we show up in the world.  When we know better, we are called to do better — not through shame or blame, but through honest reflection and courageous accountability.  Excuses keep us stuck.  Blame is a distraction.   The real work is getting underneath it all — to the roots of how we think, feel, and act.  Because how we behave in this world matters.  And the healing begins the moment we take responsibility for our own becoming.

 

And I’ve been there.  I know what it feels like to stand at the door of the cage — too afraid to leave, too soul-starved to stay.  I know the ache of. “There has to be more than this.”