Happy Wednesday! Today I want to talk about something that has been on my mind lately and that is, being yourself. The true, authentic, you, and doing so without fear.

When I first started this blog I really struggled with what I wanted to name it. This is always the case with online accounts that are going to essentially represent you in a way, isn’t it? I brainstormed for literally over a week until I finally realized, I’m never going to come up with a combination of words that I’ll feel accurately describe me as a human being! I have always gone back and forth and felt unsatisfied with my online handles. It is definitely a “modern” problem. I ultimately decided that when it came to this blog, if I didn’t make a decision quickly I wasn’t going to follow through with making a blog at all. And so with that, kataugusto.com was born. My name.

Don’t get me wrong, I had many reservations about this. It’s scary to think of someone googling you and finding your blog, or at least for me, that was scary because of an incident that happened to me when I was in grade school. At the time I had a blog (on Freewebs haha anyone remember that?) that only a couple friends knew about and they “leaked” it to my classmates one day when I was not in school. Everyone read my blog,  and some were unhappy with things I had said. I even got in trouble because students had been looking at it on the classroom computers and I had used a few swear words. They called my parents. It was an ordeal. I felt incredibly violated and took measures to be much more careful with my online presence ever since then.

Fast forward to when I decided to make this blog, I was/am an adult. A wife. A mother. And honestly? I have already arrived at a point in my life where I simply lack the desire to be anything but who I am.  There’s no need for any facade. I don’t have any friends or men I’m trying to impress, there’s no school teachers or parents that can scold me for what I post online. I don’t need to censor who I am for any other person’s sake — because no one who truly cares about me would require that. That is a universal truth about genuine relationships; be it family, friends, or lovers. You should not feel the need to be something or someone that you are not for another human being to be satisfied with you. (However this is not to say that you shouldn’t be trying to improve yourself, recognize your own toxic traits and patterns and strive to be the best version of yourself possible. That is an important part of growth and something we should all be doing.)

This blog truly helped me to be more comfortable with being myself. Writing here I have been able to get things off my chest that I have been holding onto for years. I know now, at 26, that sharing my story whether it is that of my struggle with self harm as a teenager, my grief, or my daughter’s traumatic birth, helps me, and can help others who may relate to what I have been through. Feeling like you are alone in an experience is so painfully isolating. I want to help lessen that kind of pain in the world. I don’t want other people to feel isolated in their struggles, especially since we often unknowingly struggle with so many of the same things! For me, as a person who has always felt their purpose was to help others but never quite figured out how to do it in my life, this blog satisfies that desire in a way.

In order to help myself and others I had to learn to allow myself, to be myself. To be an honest and open human being. In my offline life I don’t really struggle with honesty, but I am introverted and struggle with initiating conversations. However online it is easier to do this.  I’m learning that it is ok to start the conversation. That not everyone is sitting there judging me, and if they are, it doesn’t matter. The act of allowing yourself to be more open is something that can be very fulfilling.

And so, when I write blog posts I don’t really have the same mindset as I used to when I was younger. I went through a time in my life where, someone finding my personal blog would have been terrifying. I was afraid to share my true self with the world, with my own friends and family. I was worried about what they would think.
Do they think I’m weird? Too sensitive? Dark? Annoying?

But you know what? At times, I am all of those things.
I am a human being. We are all complex. I have no desire to hide that fact anymore.

Most importantly, the people in my life that are worth my time already know that and still love me the way I am. So, if there’s some lurker out there whose reading my posts and thinking something negative about me, I honestly don’t care. I share my stories because I know it can help others and the fulfillment that comes from being comfortable enough to be myself is far more important to me than worrying about what others think. Getting to this point can be a process but it is possible, and important — and you are worth the effort that it takes to get there. Investing in yourself is never wasted time.

Sending you love & positivity,