I Didn’t Lose Myself Overnight…And I Couldn’t Find Myself Overnight Either.
Healing is intentional.
If this is your first chapter, welcome. If you’ve been walking this journey with me since Chapter One, welcome back. Pull up a chair, pour your favorite cup, and stay awhile. This is a place where we have honest conversations about healing, faith, identity, and becoming who God created us to be. No pressure. No pretending. Just real conversations—one sip at a time.
Last week I shared why Tai-Tea exists. If you missed it, that post was the beginning of The Healing Journey.
This is not a series about having all the answers. It’s about sharing my story—the good, the hard, and everything in between. My prayer is that somewhere in these chapters you’ll recognize a piece of your own story too. Because if there is one thing I have learned, it’s this... Healing isn’t something we arrive at. It’s something we choose, over and over again.
For the longest time, I thought if I just prayed hard enough, read enough books, listened to enough sermons, or stayed busy enough, one day I’d wake up healed. I wanted healing to happen quickly. I wanted one breakthrough moment that would change everything. It doesn’t work like that. One day God showed me something so simple, but it completely changed the way I looked at my life. I didn’t lose myself overnight… so I wasn’t going to find myself overnight either. There were layers I didn’t even know I had. Some came from childhood. Some came from disappointment. Some came from grief. Some came from words people spoke over me, and others came from the silence of words I longed to hear but never did.
One of the hardest things for me to admit was that I never really felt like I was someone’s person. You know what I mean? It seemed like everyone had that one person—the friend who always called first, the family member they could count on, or the person who naturally thought about them. I don’t know that I’ve ever truly felt that. More often than not, I was the one reaching out, checking in, making the plans, remembering birthdays, and asking everyone else how they were doing. Then one day, I stopped. Not because I was upset. Not because I wanted to prove a point. Honestly, I was just tired.
What happened next hurt more than I expected. The phone got quiet. The text messages slowed down. The invitations stopped coming. It made me wonder if I had been carrying some of those relationships all along. I remember asking myself a question that I had never said out loud before. Am I anybody’s person? Not in a romantic relationship. Just...to anyone. Is there anyone who naturally thinks of me the way I think of them? For a long time, I carried that question without realizing how much it was shaping the way I lived. I kept giving more, doing more, and showing up more because somewhere deep inside, I thought that if I loved people well enough, eventually someone would choose me too. But God has a way of asking the questions we’re trying to avoid.
One day, it was almost as if He whispered to my heart,”Taisha...what if you’re looking for people to give you something only I can?” That stopped me. I had spent years asking, “Why doesn’t anyone choose me?”the better question was, “Why do I keep forgetting that God already has?” That realization didn’t erase the loneliness overnight, and it didn’t suddenly change every relationship in my life. What it changed was me. I slowly stopped measuring my worth by who called, who invited me, who remembered me, or who stayed. Instead, I began learning what it really meant to find my identity in Christ.
I’m still learning. Some days I still struggle. Some days those old thoughts try to creep back in, but now I know how to recognize them for what they are. They are old wounds. They are not who I am. Maybe that’s what healing really is—not pretending the wounds never happened, but refusing to let them tell you who you are anymore.
That’s why Tea Talk exists. Not because I’ve figured life out, but because I’m still walking this journey. And if my story reminds just one person that they aren’t alone, then every word is worth writing.
Sip & Reflect
Can I leave you with one question?
Have you been waiting for someone to choose you...while forgetting that God already has? Sit with that for a minute.
Pray about it. Journal if you need to. Then ask God to show you where you’ve been finding your identity. Because healing begins when we stop believing what our wounds have been saying… and start believing what God has been saying all along.
Until next time,
Sip with purpose. Live with intention. Heal one day at a time.
Taisha