02/09/2026
🐛🦋 Mental Health Moment ~ Grief Talk Series
When You Don’t Recognize Yourself Anymore✨️
Grieving the Person You Thought You Were 💞I Would Never Lie About Something Like That” — Until Lying Became Convenient
Most of us have things we believe we would never do.
We know where our lines are. We know what we value. We know the kind of person we believe ourselves to be.
And then, sometimes, the line moves.
Not necessarily because we woke up one morning and decided that honesty no longer mattered. Sometimes it begins with something much smaller.
We leave out one important detail.
We change the story just enough to protect ourselves.
We allow someone to believe something we know isn't true.
We stay quiet because correcting the record might cost us something.
And eventually, something we once believed we would never do becomes something we have learned to justify.
This happens in our personal lives.
We may lie to avoid confrontation, protect a relationship, conceal a choice, maintain an image, or avoid disappointing someone. But when dishonesty repeatedly becomes the easier option, we can eventually find ourselves looking at our own behaviour and wondering:
When did this become so easy for me?
The same thing can happen in the workplace.
Perhaps we withhold information because sharing it could benefit someone else. We allow a colleague to take blame for something we know wasn't entirely their responsibility. We alter the truth because admitting what actually happened could affect our position, reputation, promotion, or relationship with leadership.
Sometimes we don't even tell the lie.
We simply allow the convenient version of the truth to stand.
And there can be grief in that realization.
Because when our behaviour repeatedly contradicts the values we believed defined us, we don't only risk losing the trust of other people.
We can begin losing trust in ourselves.
That is a different kind of loss.
The grief may not be for another person. It may be for the version of ourselves who once knew exactly where the line was—and believed we would never cross it.
Today isn't about condemnation. It's about reflection.
What have you started calling necessary, harmless, or convenient that an earlier version of you would have called wrong?
Sometimes finding our way back to ourselves begins with being willing to tell ourselves the truth.✨️
