There will come a time - better, there will come a hundred times - when people stop to stare at you. People who have known you for impressive amounts of time will look at you with new eyes, surprised smiles, even awe. Every day that you work to live, you learn more of who you are. Every day that you question yourself, your experience, your true motivations and beliefs, you better understand who you are. As you understand, you will find, you accept. Ultimately, you will discover that you, of all people, are someone you can most certainly love. When you move through the dark doubts and shames that have kept you from seeing yourself as you are - as a valuable, blessed creature - you will discover everything you love and admire in others rooted in yourself. The qualities that draw you toward another person lie in wait within you, slowly growing. When you discover them, you will see them grow stronger and more present simply because they've been noticed, validated, by you. When you begin to clear away the rough growth around them, and clear the way for light, they will steadily move toward splendor. You will be, visibly, the source of wonder you have always been at the core. And this development will draw awe from those around you. Others will look at you with amazement, yes. And incredibly, eventually, you will look at yourself with the same impressed expression and overreaching gratitude.

You will begin receiving the compliments you give with the most passion. The qualities you admire from others will become evident in yourself. Your character will be free; you will know yourself better. Who you are will be evident in your behavior, making it easier for others to connect with, respect, and validate you. After all this time, you will find their validation a celebration of knowing you already have. You'll find you no longer need others to find the good in your but certainly don't mind when someone joins you in examining it. You admire behaviors, manners, and people for a reason; because of who you are, you value these qualities. And so, you will discover these qualities are who you are, and you can help them develop into a whole person, through a process of recovery. Acquaint yourself with yourself, consciously; become aware of who you are. From this, you can make decisions about how you grow. To recover means to live consciously, to experience everything with awareness; this everything includes your identity. You will find, the more time you spend honestly tracing your action, experience, emotion, and identity, the less hidden it will be. Each reality rooted in a valid need, each need rooted in an awe-inspiring self, you will discover, and you will become. You will become who you are by recognizing who you are and by living honestly as that person. You will have the power of consciousness, which allows you to move forward in directions you choose, to grow into who you most want to be.

When you live this way, awe and commendation from others will excite and affirm you; your own awe will sustain you. Your own joy will propell you forward. You are what you value; value yourself and you'll discover who you are. You will know your beliefs, your habits, your preferences, your style better than you can imagine now. You will know yourself better than you know your illness, better than your illness knows you. You will have consciously worked to understand who you are, and so the knowledge will be strong within you. Sharing yourself - your opinions, your needs, your goals - will no longer feel like an anxious guessing game, a test where your best guess is your best answer. You'll find yourself helping those people drawn to know you do so. You'll be able to explain yourself. You'll be able to teach someone else the sometimes minute differences between who you are and who you are not, with the confidence of someone who has lived with awareness, who has consciously done the work. You will know your essential self and live the life that is authentically yours. And that gift will give you more than you anticipate, more than you can hope. That gift, of self, authentically, ultimately will matter most.