Small Moments Hold the Truth

Yesterday we talked about iterating towards your authentic self and the honesty required to do so. 

Iterating towards your authentic self requires peeling back a lot of layers. 

Have you ever watched one of those satisfying videos where someone is restoring an old house and decides to thanklessly remove layer after layer of paint from an old door or an old built-in? It takes the right tools, a lot of time and care, and a shit-ton of elbow grease. 

Each layer was placed there by a version of you that needed to survive. To survive the different people that have come and gone. To survive the jobs you’ve had. To survive the traumas you’ve lived. 

Most of these layers were put there to protect you. 
And sometimes protecting yourself means justifying undesirable behaviors. 

White Lies and Honest Intentions

Have you heard the saying “we judge others by their actions, we judge ourselves by our intent?” We protect ourselves from shame by justifying actions that don't fully align with who we want to be. But whether we intended harm or not, impact matters more than intent. And if we want to live more authentically, we have to start noticing these small moments before we can shift them.

I started noticing that these little white lies would catch in my throat, whether I said them out loud or only in my head. And I realized: if I’m needing to justify an action, is it really something I want to be doing, regardless of my intent?

For me to start becoming more authentic, I turned that hyper self-awareness skill into self-reflection, in particular of my motivations in certain situations.

When I would catch myself justifying behaviors or actions, I would sit with that for a moment and genuinely ask myself why I did something.

It could be as small as one of my kids asking for a certain toy to help them at bedtime and the first response out of my mouth being: “I don’t know where that toy is.”

And then upon reflection, thinking: that’s not true. I do know where it is.

And we might justify why we claimed we didn’t know where the toy was. “Maybe they need to learn how to go to sleep without that toy,” or “It’s way past their bedtime,” or “The toy is in an inconvenient place.”

But the reality is, maybe we just don’t want to get up. And it’s okay to be honest about that.

If we don’t want to, or can’t, be honest about those motivations, then we need to ask ourselves why. If the answer is “that’s not a good enough reason,” then, maybe, we should get up and go get that toy.

You might be thinking, geez, Heather, were you just walking around lying?

And the answer is no. Lying is a conscious and intentional action.
I am actually a terrible liar. I have zero poker face. 
That is what makes this practice in particular quite tricky. 

These moments are reflexive and rooted in our deep subconscious.

And they happen far more often than you realize. You have to learn to catch these moments. It takes practice and attention. 

Noticing

Noticing isn’t about criticizing yourself. It’s about gathering data with curiosity, not judgment.

Boundary work and authenticity work require a great deal of paying attention.

Like debugging a system, bridgework starts with awareness.

This honesty with ourselves (and with our motivations, thoughts, and actions) is a step toward authenticity.

A lot of this work happens internally first.

Sometimes it’s just starting to notice these moments and tagging them in your brain without even outwardly changing anything right away. 

And that is a lot of internal work where only you can see and feel the progress.

You are not going to wake up one day and be like, “Okay. I am my authentic self now.”

You need to know your authentic self and understand why you’re suppressing or neglecting them first.

The Little Truths We Already Hold.

To read all this, you might start to feel like: So I just need to walk around with a list of everything that’s hard, everything that’s off, everything I’m lying to myself about?

No.
That’s not the only work.
The other half, the quieter, just-as-important half, is noticing what’s already true.

Noticing the small joys. The weird or wonderful strengths. The places where you already feel like yourself. These are the spaces where alignment already lives, even if just for a moment.

You don’t have to wait for some magical “day of authenticity” to arrive.

It’s already here. It’s already in you.

It’s in moments like sitting out in my egg swing with a cup of sleepytime tea, smiling at the lights bouncing off Lake Washington, feeling totally at peace, and choosing to notice it. To add it to my collection of small inner truths and quiet joys.

It’s in the small, ordinary sacredness of daily life.

Like every morning when my son comes out of his room, groggy and wild-haired, and crawls into my lap. No words, just holding each other. Just being.

The way my daughter beamed as she sorted through the new prints I’d made for the picture wall, gathering every photo she found of just her into a pile, then asking if she could have her own section with a huge smile on her face.

It’s in the car ride home from urgent care with my other daughter, her wrist freshly splinted, a result of a roller-skating accident. She sat quietly as I dictated text after text to worried family members, praising her bravery, that she listened to her body and insisted that something didn’t feel right, her ability to make even the nurses laugh. And then, hearing from the back seat:
“It makes me feel really good to hear you say those things about me, Momma.”

It’s in being seen and loved by friends and family.

It’s in the sweet joy of my mother’s text after reading my piece on boundaries and saying “you quoted me.”

It’s in the purity of a dear friend transitioning into their authentic self and stepping out of the toxic habits that once sheltered them in spaces that weren’t quite right for them anyway.

It’s when my best friend comes to stay and we eat platters of cheese, fruit and bread, watch scary movies, talk about our lives, and sit in the decades-deep love that comes from growing into ourselves side by side.

And it’s in every message—text, voice note, call, email—from someone who’s read The Bridgework Project and told me it’s already changing something in their life.

These are my truths. And I don’t have to chase them down. I just have to pay attention.

Reflective Prompts

• What small truth have I overlooked today?

• Where did I feel most like myself this week?