The First Time I Remember Being Me

This might sound strange, but lately I’ve been asking myself a question I never expected to ask out loud:

Do you remember the very first time you were conscious of being you?

Not just a childhood memory.
Not a moment captured in a photo.
But the first time you felt yourself — that quiet, private awareness of:
I am here. This is me.

I don’t know how consciousness works. I don’t pretend to understand why certain memories surface and others stay buried. But over the past few weeks, as I’ve been clawing my way through a wave of panic, grief, and that awful fear that everyone secretly hates me… something unexpected rose to the surface.

A memory.

No — a feeling.

When the storm finally settled one night, when I could breathe without shaking, I let myself sit in the quiet. The kind of quiet you only get after you’ve cried yourself empty. And in that stillness, something flickered. A flash. A glimmer.

The very first moment I remember being aware of myself.

I was so young — definitely younger than four. I can see it as clearly as if I stepped back into the room. I’m in the house I lived in with my mom. I’m in my bedroom with its princess canopy bed, the fabric draping down like something soft and magical. I’m lying on my left side. I can feel my Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase against my cheek. And I remember — vividly — sucking my thumb.

But here’s the strange part:

It wasn’t the action that mattered.
It was the awareness of the action.

I remember thinking, almost narrating to myself:

“I’m sucking my thumb. I’m in my bed.”

And that’s it.
That tiny, ordinary moment is the first time I remember being me.

I don’t know why that memory came back. I don’t know why it’s been lingering in my mind for a week and a half, refusing to fade. Maybe it surfaced because I’ve been pushed so deeply inside myself lately — deeper than I wanted to go — and this is the point my mind returned to. A kind of origin moment.

Maybe my brain was reminding me that I’ve been “me” for a very long time. That even before trauma, loss, grief, and fear shaped me, there was a quiet little girl lying in her canopy bed, aware of herself and her own tiny world.

Or maybe it’s simply a sign that the answers to why we react the way we do don’t always live in the adult version of us.

They live in the very first version of us.
The one who was just beginning to become.

I don’t know what this memory means yet.

But I know it means something.

And I’m listening.

XO Bri

Reconnect with yourself and start writing, allow yourself to release and reflect.

7 Days Of Stillness

If you’ve been feeling pulled back into old versions of yourself too, you might love the 7 Days of Stillness prompts I put together. It’s a simple, gentle practice — one short prompt each day for a week — designed to help you slow down, breathe, and reconnect with the parts of yourself you don’t always hear in the rush of everyday life.

No pressure. No expectations.
Just seven small pauses that help you notice what’s been simmering underneath… and what you might be ready to understand about yourself now.

Sometimes stillness is the only place the first version of us can speak.