Nearly my whole life I have struggled to be my authentic self. I believed to my core that I was not worthy of love and the beauty of simply existing in the world, constantly looking to other people for love and approval. Attempts at expressing myself openly only felt unsafe and debilitating, leading me to close off even more from the world and retreat into my own inner shame. I decided to give myself such a high bar for how I wanted to act around people instead of simply being, simply existing as I was in the moment. I would do this around everyone I came into contact with, regardless of who you were in my life.

I can see more clearly now the deep inferiority complex I had and the lack of self-compassion, and my efforts to compensate for it. This had a very tight grip on me and lead me to completely dishonouring myself, leaving absolutely no room for true self-expression.

Along with inner turmoil, to make matters worse, we live in a society that hides true feelings. If someone is crying in public we tend to ask ourselves what is wrong with that person, instead of seeing it as a form of self-care. Meanwhile, social media tells us that we must only show one portrayal of life, one where we are happy, care free, going on endless beautiful adventures and having the best relationships. The reality is, we all have struggles, we all have traumas, whether big or small and we all battle with conflicting emotions. It is difficult to be vulnerable in a world or upbringing that told us we cannot show any signs of flaws or weakness, that we ought to feel shame for our mere existence and all the things we lack.

Our true voice deserves to be uncovered, our true feelings deserve to be released into the world and we deserve to lovingly express our truth. Our inner world of feelings matter, our shame and fears matter. They are not things that should be hidden from the world, but held lovingly with patience, forgiveness and compassion.

To me, being authentic means being my truest innermost self in each moment. Not what society expects me to be, not what authority expect me to be, and most importantly, not what I expect myself to be … but who I actually truly am at my core. The most authentic me where I strip back all the layers of expectation and self judgement and I am able to simply exist in the world, knowing that I am already safe and loved and therefore I can act from my truest nature.

Nature is in itself authentic because it shows us every part of itself in each unfolding moment. A flower reveals every stage of its life. It shows it growing, budding, blooming and then inevitably dying. Our emotions are like a flower experiencing its different stages. A flower cannot always be in a state of blooming, it shares with us all the parts of itself, authentically and beautifully. It holds itself gently throughout each and every stage of its life, not just when it is in bloom … it understands the dualistic nature of life.

Spending time with authenticity like this helps us reach within ourselves to find it too. This is why I believe being in nature, where inner thoughts begin to quiet and we are looking directly at a true authentic, loving expression … we also cannot help but be authentic and feel safe to do so, even if just on a subconscious level.

There have been countless times I believed I was completely fine, only to retreat into nature by myself to find tears. Nature in those moments revealed to me how I was truly feeling … what I truly felt at my core. Nature has this effect on us if we let go and allow it to reveal to us a truth that we may not yet know, leaving just the true and authentic expressive inner child within us. This is a child that yearns for safety and to be lovingly held and supported no matter what is being felt. This is why to encompass ourselves in nature, we are allowed to safely express our authentic emotion in that moment, and nature will help us be with what needs to be felt if we let it.

Nature is an unconditionally loving energy expressed outwardly. To connect with something as beautiful and authentic as a flower for example, to really immerse oneself in it and feel its energy is healing in itself. We cannot help but retreat into the safety of this energy, while it holds our painful emotions and allows it to be beautifully released from our bodies and healed into love. Love heals, and nature carries this loving energy in it. This is why nature helps us release what we are truly keeping inside if we allow ourselves to let it, if we open ourselves up to its energy. If we come to nature with this intention, nature will show its true healing beauty and raw authentic energy so that our authentic feelings deep within can be healed and released in the present moment.

Allow nature to remind you it is safe to be your authentic self. Allow it to reveal to you what it needs to. Being present in nature with the intention of authenticity, you may find the surfacing of layers of pain and sadness, there may be anger, there may be shame, but to bottle it up deep within us and hide it is to suffer. Nature gives us the safe environment to let these emotions be felt, openly and non-judgmentally like they may have never been before. This may not be easy, however in the face of nature there is a feeling of a loving companion, all while inspiring us to be our truest most beautiful expression … who we are in the moment, the child within that simply wants to express itself. As these emotions are felt not only is it more authentic to our self but it also heals a layer of us that we presented to the world that wasn’t aligned with who we were.

The more we do this, the greater our capacity to feel authentically what is stored deep within us and express it to the world. This is a form of healing expression, and natures beautiful ability to show us our own raw authenticity.