Recently, many conversations I've been in seem to circle back to a key theme:

Authenticity. Courage to live as who we truly are at this point in our lives. Choosing ourselves — even though most of us were conditioned not to.

This topic hits close to home, so I’m noticing it everywhere. Power of perception and all that. Something is shifting for a lot of women right now, especially in midlife, and the conversations feel like they're getting more honest. Definitely more vulnerable.

One thing I'm hearing is that many women are finding it hard to be their authentic selves with people they've known for years, like in their friendships.

At some point, we feel like we are performing a version of ourselves inside relationships that no longer fit. As we change, some friendships may start to feel less resonant, simply because we are evolving and changing at different speeds. So of course in some cases there will be a shift.

This goes for our intimate relationships, too. If we aren't giving space for our loved ones to be fully themselves in who they are today, that is going to feel like a hard path to stay on together.

At some point we have to ask: am I willing to keep abandoning myself?

Every time we lower our energy just to match someone else's. Every time we don't say how we feel about something. Every time we shape-shift to keep the room comfortable. Every time we make ourselves smaller, easier, more palatable, we are abandoning ourselves.

So, what's the connection between authenticity and spirituality?

In a spiritual text I study and teach, The Freedom Transmissions, there's this idea of the lost lamb — the parts of ourselves we cast out of the flock because we don't like them. This lost lamb could represent shame, fear, anger, low self-worth, bigness, brightness, you name it.

We send the lamb out into the field and pretend it doesn't belong to us.

Recently I did a workshop on The Shadow with Kristan Sargeant (you can get the replay here) where I realized the shadow within us (turns out we have an Inferior Shadow and an Evil Shadow — sounds scarier than it is!) is another name for that lost lamb. And until we welcome our Shadow, or our lost lamb, back into our fold, we will never be whole.

And that's what this whole life journey is about: returning to wholeness (both human and divine). Authenticity is wholeness.

Recently I recommended a conversation I heard on the podcast Mayim Bialik's Breakdown. Bialik speaks to Vincent Tolman, a man who was clinically dead for 90 minutes and came back with ten life-changing lessons.

While he was on the other side, a spirit guide asked him: "What do you think the most important thing in this life is?" Life being what he calls Earth School. Tolman answered "Love." I probably would've said the same thing.

However he was told that in this realm (earth/being human), the most important thing is authenticity. And while we may think we're living authentically, there's an invitation to notice how many different masks we wear in our lives, depending on who we're with or what we are doing. His guide shared that usually these masks aren't the ones we think we need, they are the masks that we think they want. We often change, morph, and become who we think others want us to be.

When he asked his guide, "Well, how do you get authenticity?," his guide shared that when we first come here, we are very authentic as children, until we are about 5 years old. We often move back into authenticity in our mid to late 80s or 90s.

But from age 5 to 85, we wear many, many masks.

Tolman learned that "when we cannot be authentic, we cannot authentically love anyone, and we especially can't authentically love ourselves. And if we can't love ourselves, we cannot love anyone. We have no power of love towards anyone unless we love self first."

As Tolman shared, we have to get over this idea that we are as valuable as what others think we are, "because we're far more valuable than all that from the beginning. And in fact, Spirit has used a specific term with me a lot, and they call it a Divine Masterwork. That's all of us. We're a Divine Masterwork."

So, it's no surprise that many of us, as we hit midlife, notice we've been wearing masks for so long that we sometimes forget who we actually are.

This is personal, and it is spiritual. It's the work of a soul-led life — coming home to all of who we are.

Something I tell myself these days — and tell my children — is that we're going to be judged no matter what. You know how some people say, "Oh, don't worry about that, no one is even thinking of you." I'm not so sure about that. People do think about us. People have opinions. That's just part of being human together.

So if we're going to be judged either way, the only real question is: whose approval are we going to live for? Theirs, or our own.

So choose yourself.

Welcome the lost little lamb home. Partner with your Shadow. Let the masks fall, one conversation at a time.

This is the work of a whole life. This is the work of a soul.

Keep holding the light. 🤍 Xo, Laurie