When What You Know About Yourself Doesn’t Match What You Believe

When I was younger, I knew I wanted to work with youth because I never wanted another child to feel the way I had felt growing up.

There was something inside me, even as a child, that knew I was worthy of love. I knew there was more to me than the things happening around me. I knew the circumstances I was experiencing could not be the whole story of who I was. But knowing something and truly believing something are two very different things.

The hardest part was that what I felt deep down did not always match what was being reflected back to me. I often felt like the people around me saw the pain, the circumstances, or the things they did not understand, but they did not always see the child underneath it who was hurting and longing to be loved.

Even then, I found myself wondering about their stories. I wondered what they had experienced, what they had carried, and what had happened in their own lives that shaped them into who they had become. Somehow, even in my own pain, I could see that hurt often came from somewhere.

But my biggest questions were always for God.

Why would you create me, bring me halfway across the world, and place me somewhere I felt so disconnected and unseen?

Looking back now, I can see that even in those questions there was something within me that continued to search for a deeper truth. I did not have all the answers, and I could not explain it, but I knew there had to be something more.

Throughout my career, I began seeing that same conflict in the lives of so many people I had the privilege of working with.

I would have conversations with people who would say, “I know.”

I know I am not just a criminal.I know I am not just an addict.I know I am not just my mistakes.I know I am not just my role, my title, or what others see when they look at me.

Many of them had done the work. They had spent years trying to understand themselves, heal from what they had experienced, build something different, or become the person they knew they wanted to be. They could talk about what they had learned. They could explain what they understood. They could tell you what they knew to be true.

But sometimes, there was still a space between knowing and believing.

They knew they were more than their mistakes, more than the labels that had followed them, and more than what others had learned to see.

But somewhere along the way, those messages had become so familiar that they started to feel like truth.

Over and over again, I saw that what showed up on the outside was often connected to something much deeper happening within. A behaviour was rarely just a behaviour. There was usually a story behind it, an experience that shaped it, or a belief someone had slowly formed about themselves.

That was the part I was always drawn to. Not just what someone was doing, but understanding what was underneath it. What had they come to believe about themselves? What had they learned to carry? What had become so familiar that they could no longer see it was something they had learned?

Because knowing something in your mind does not always mean you believe it in your heart.

This was something I had known deep within myself for a long time. The challenge was not discovering that truth, but learning how to separate it from all the messages and experiences that tried to convince me of something different.

I have spent my life bringing my mind and my heart back into alignment — learning to separate the doubts and messages this world tried to make me believe from the deeper truth of who I was created to be. Even when I could not see the answers, I knew there was something deeper.

And that is what I carried into my work with others.

When someone reaches that deeper truth, when what they know in their mind finally becomes something they believe in their heart, something changes. It is no longer just something they understand. It becomes something they embody.

That is when transformation begins to happen right before your eyes.

Not because someone becomes someone new, but because they begin to live free from the messages, experiences, and beliefs that taught them to see themselves differently. They begin to reconnect with who they were all along — not the version shaped by what happened to them, but the person who was there beneath it all.

There is no greater motivator, and nothing more empowering, than to simply be seen.

Sometimes someone walking through grief does not need someone to tell them everything is going to be okay. They need someone willing to sit with them in that grief and allow them the space to experience what they are feeling.

Someone experiencing deep joy does not need someone to explain it or question it. They need someone who can simply be present with them in that moment.

To be fully present with someone — no matter how difficult or how beautiful that moment is — is one of the greatest gifts we can offer.

Because when someone feels truly seen, they begin to see themselves differently. And sometimes, that is where renewal begins.