Finding Ourselves – Reclaming the Feminine Divine Within

A return to the part of you that never left

There are moments when nothing is obviously wrong, and yet something doesn’t feel right. You might even find yourself wondering, “Why don’t I feel like myself anymore?”, even when everything in your life seems fine. Sometimes this disconnection is so subtle you almost miss it.

You’re moving through your life the way you always have. Showing up. Taking care of what needs to be done. You’re saying the right things and being who you’re expected to be.

But inside, something feels off.

Not in a way that you can easily explain. Just a disquieting sense that you’re not fully there, like you’ve drifted out of alignment with yourself.

It shows up in small ways. In the pause you take before you answer a question that you should know. Or you find yourself second-guessing what you feel or want. It could be the subtle sense that you’re living your life… but not quite inside it.

You might not have words for it. Only a sense that something is missing, or more accurately, something in you has gone silent.

Not gone. Just… harder to reach.

And so, like so many of us do, you look outward for answers, for clarity, for something that will make it all make sense.

But what you’re searching for isn’t out there.

It’s something within you that hasn’t been lost; you’ve just become disconnected from yourself. And once you begin to feel that disconnection…it’s hard to ignore.

At first, you might not understand what’s happening—only that something doesn’t feel right anymore. But that feeling doesn’t go away.

You’re not alone in this.

When Selflessness Becomes Self-Erasure

Many women have sublimated their personalities to their roles in life, to the needs of their families, or to the desires of their significant other. In the process of taking care of everyone else, which we’re taught from an early age is the ultimate feminine act, we lose our Selves. In trying to live up to the hype of being altruistic and selfless, we’ve become Self-LESS; less than who we really are. This causes us to feel lost, alone, unworthy, disconnected, frustrated, bitter, and angry.

I’ve experienced this in my life. For most of my life, I suffered from severe depression, including suicidal thoughts. I didn’t know myself and who I was. This made me feel lost, constantly searching for my purpose, my reason for even being alive. I did what many of us do: I searched outside myself for what I was missing. However, the more I searched in vain, the more alone, bitter, and angry I became. I was not a happy person—or even particularly nice.

Because I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted, I kept looking outside of myself for what I was missing. However, what I wanted was hidden deep inside of me. As I deepened my healing journey, I realized this wasn’t only a personal struggle, failure, or just my story, but cultural conditioning. It’s something many women are living too. And when you begin to see it, you can’t unsee it.

Through patriarchy’s actions and lies, women (and men) have lost their connection to the Divine Feminine, the Goddess. The patriarchy tried to bury and eradicate the Goddess; and therefore, we’ve lost our images and role models for being amazing, divine women. And we’ve lost our connection to ourselves. But as a teenager, something called to me, softly at first, then more clearly — the Goddess. (I share more about that first experience here.)

The Moment I Began to Return to Myself

As I worked more closely with the Goddess, reclaiming my connection to her, I also began to connect with myself. This led to years of doing deep inner work and self-transformation, searching for the truth of myself, until I finally reclaimed my Self. My immortal essence, my Inner Being, the part of me that can never be lost, only hidden. At first, I didn’t have language for it, only the feeling of something within me calling to me — and waking something up inside of me.

Many people call it your Higher Self, and this is what I called it for years. But as I examined how it made me feel, I came to highly dislike it. The term “Higher Self” implies hierarchy—something above us, separate from our physical bodies and our deep inner knowing. It mirrors the same power structures, dominance, and distance that patriarchy imposes on the divine. When we place our own wisdom outside ourselves, we disconnect from our wholeness. It encourages us to remain outside of ourselves rather than becoming fully embodied.

The Part of You That Was Never Lost

Instead, using the term Inner Being reminds me of the wisdom that resides within me and is part of me. It isn’t separate or above me, but that aspect of myself always and fully connected to Source, or the Divine.

Even when we lose awareness of it, our Inner Being lives inside of us and guides us in what’s right for us. This part of us hasn’t forgotten and hasn’t become disconnected from Source, from All That Is. Our Inner Being remains intertwined with Source, even as we move through all of our life experiences, trauma/drama, societal conditioning, stress, or fear.

Part of our challenge is that our conscious minds, and even our subconscious minds, lose this link to Source.

Life happens, and we lose our attunement to our inner divinity. We become out-of-sync, off-key, and no longer vibrating at our most harmonious frequency. This kind of disconnection can be hard to name. Many people describe it as feeling off, numb, or distant from themselves without understanding why.

What Disconnection Can Feel Like

For me, this wasn’t just an idea—it was something I lived. I experienced this as deep-seated self-hatred, depression, and dissatisfaction with my life. Joy and love seemed out of reach. I felt like there was more to life than simply existing, surviving, and waiting for some heavenly reward or punishment. Something inside of me hungered for more, even when I didn’t know how to access it. It didn’t make sense to me then — but looking back, I can see it differently now.

This is all part of the game of life, of being in a physical body, in this physical dimension, on this physical earth. It’s part of why our souls chose to incarnate into physical reality. We wanted to discover all the joys, love, beauty, and challenges that come from being in a physical body. And we wanted to experience the inherent dualities of sorrow, loss, anger, and fear. Even though we understood we’d forget our truth and connection to Source, we also knew our Inner Being would always remember, would always stay attuned to our true vibration. But remembering doesn’t happen all at once.

Reconnecting with Yourself Isn’t Instant

If you’ve ever wondered how to reconnect with yourself, it often doesn’t begin with doing more—it begins with noticing what you’ve been disconnected from. It’s taken years of intense inner work and transformation to reclaim my Self. I worked on healing past trauma, using various techniques and methods, to discover the root causes of my dissatisfaction. Inner growth doesn’t usually happen in one quantum leap or in a linear fashion; and it didn’t work that way for me. Self-transformation is a spiral.
I’d reveal a layer of trauma, conditioning, or outside expectations, healing the resulting trauma/drama, followed by integrating the new mindset or perspective. Then something would happen, and I’d slip back into disconnection and old patterns. However, something deep within me kept pulling me forward, and I’d discover another layer of healing I needed to do and another shift in perspective, understanding, and wisdom. Reflection, journaling, embodiment practices, and learning to trust my inner knowing and intuition helped me establish a conscious connection with my Inner Being. And as that connection deepened, something else began to shift.

From Disconnection to Embodiment

As I became more attuned to my Inner Being, a different term evolved which felt even more aligned with how I felt and perceived this aspect of me. I was guided to call it my Feminine Divine Presence. This reminds me on a conscious and subconscious level that I AM DIVINE! Not as an idea, but as something I can feel and embody.

I am more than a mortal being — I’m an immortal soul incarnated in a physical body. For the first time, I embodied that truth rather than simply thinking it. The term “presence” reminds me not only to be present in the now moment, but that my divine nature is concrete, real, and here within me. It isn’t ephemeral or “out there somewhere.” When I’m aligned with my Feminine Divine, I have an unmistakable presence or quality about me others can see and feel.

Unlike when I used “Higher Self”, this connection isn’t abstract or conceptual. It’s an embodied spirituality—felt in the body, not imagined above it. When I connect to my Inner Being or my Feminine Divine Presence, my attention and thoughts don’t fly away from me to some place “out there” in the ethers. Instead, my attention dives deep into my body, deep into my internal awareness. My inner vibration — my inner tune or song — comes into harmony. I know the truth of who I am.

Remembering Who We Are Beneath the Labels

As I reconnected with myself, I began to see how much labels shaped my identity, both those I applied or those I took on through conditioning. From that place, I could recognize myself more clearly.

Our conscious mind needs labels to understand our reality, including our identities. When I’m aligned and attuned, I expand beyond the labels I once thought I was or was conditioned to believe I was. I can sort through those labels and toss out the ones that don’t apply to me any longer (if they ever did) and install new, more aligned labels. My exploration revealed I’m no longer shy, depressed, or furious. The labels of being quiet, subdued, or aloof aren’t me, and I can relinquish them.

Instead, I can embrace being boisterously fun, audacious, and unapologetic. I am embracing being joyful, courageous, and compassionate.

When you truly see yourself — fully and clearly — appreciation naturally follows. Something unexpected happened in that process. Not only have I found myself, but I’ve fallen in love with myself. I’m pretty awesome!

Remembering Through the Goddess

I didn’t walk this path alone. Throughout my transformation, the Goddess remained a constant presence. As I deepened this connection with myself, my connection and relationship with the Goddess also deepened. She guided me through this process, not as an unapproachable entity, but as a loving presence, holding a mirror of reflection for me to see my truth. Working with the Divine Feminine shows me what I’m capable of, what I can reach for, and what I already have within me.

The Goddess holds and transmits the vibration and frequency of the qualities we’d like to be or have in our lives. By attuning my energy with hers, I can embody that quality. When we do, it changes everything. (I talk more about this in my essay: The Goddess as a Role Model for Who We Are Meant to Be.)

My life is so much better! I’m finally living a fulfilling, satisfying, thriving life, doing work I love. I am now living joyfully, unapologetically, fearlessly as me—the person I’m meant to be.

What This Path Begins to Reveal

Through my own journey, I’ve come to understand that the Goddess isn’t distant or unapproachable. When we attune to her presence, we attune to ourselves. She’s a mirror—reflecting back our worth, our power, our beauty, and our divinity.

In working with the Goddess, I’ve come to acknowledge my inner qualities, recognize my inner strength, and accept my inner Self. Through all of this — through the remembering, the healing, the becoming — I’ve uncovered a truth that changed everything for me and one that the patriarchy wants kept hidden.

WE ARE DIVINE!

You Were Never Lost

Reclaiming ourselves isn’t about becoming someone new; rather, we remember who we were before society taught us to disappear. This doesn’t have to be a dramatic transformation or a sudden shift into something new.

It begins in the quiet moments of recognition, when something you read or feel resonates deep within you in a way you can’t quite explain. It unfolds when you sense, even briefly, that there is more to you than what you’ve been living.

That part of you — the part that is always connected to Source, even in the moments when you felt the most disconnected — is still there. It has always been there, steady and whole beneath everything else.

She is there, not asking you to become someone else, but simply waiting for you to return to yourself. To remember what has always been within you.

You’re not lost. You aren’t broken.

And maybe, somewhere within you, you already know this.

If something in this resonated with you, you don’t need to rush past it or figure it out right away. Sometimes, simply noticing what surfaced within you is enough.

You might take a few moments—whether through journaling, reflection, or just sitting with yourself—to explore what this brought up for you. There’s nothing to fix or change here. Only something to notice, and perhaps begin to understand in your own way.

1. Where in your life do you feel slightly out of alignment with yourself, even if everything looks “fine” on the surface?

2. Are there moments when you notice yourself second-guessing what you feel or want? What do those moments feel like for you?

3. Are there expectations, roles, or identities you’ve been living inside of that no longer feel fully true for you?

Continue the Journey with the Goddess

If this essay has opened questions about who you are beneath the roles, expectations, and conditioning you’ve carried, the Goddess Remembrance Guides offer another way to continue that exploration—through relationship with the Goddess.

Each Guide invites you into relationship with an individual Goddess and the particular territory She opens, with devotional practices designed to help you recognize, explore, and embody more of what is already true within you.

I invite you to join the conversation on my Substack, Lunar Ink & Alchemy, to share your experience and insights from reading this essay.