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Personal Reflection

The world teaches you early how to hide. Not maliciously — just insistently. It rewards composure, not truth; appearance, not presence. You learn to smile when you want to scream, to make peace with things that gnaw at you in the dark. Hiding becomes habit, and habit becomes identity.

But there comes a breaking point — subtle at first — when the performance starts to hurt more than the exposure ever could. That’s where Estés is pointing. Standing up and showing your soul isn’t rebellion for its own sake; it’s survival through honesty. It’s saying, I will not vanish to make you comfortable.

To show your soul in a storm is not to transcend fear but to let it stand beside you. To let the world see your tremor and your teeth, your tenderness and your rage — unedited. Because calm doesn’t mean silence; sometimes calm is the stillness that remains after everything collapses and you refuse to collapse with it.

The soul isn’t a performance. It’s the quiet insistence that even if the world doesn’t listen, you’ll speak anyway — not to be heard, but to stay human.

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Reflective Prompt

Where in your life have you been mistaking composure for peace?
What would happen if you stopped shrinking to survive and started letting your unguarded self breathe in full view of the storm?