Becoming a person

‘There is no place so awake and alive

as the edge of becoming.’

                                                     Sue Monk Kidd

A woman is dreaming. In her dream, she sits alone on the sand by the edge of the ocean. She is nine months pregnant and in the early stages of labour. She looks around her but there is no one to help her so she has no choice but to deliver the baby herself. When she finally gives birth to a baby girl and holds her up to her face, she is stunned to discover that she has given birth to herself, that she is both mother and baby. The woman is writer Sue Monk Kidd. On awakening, she is aware of a strong sense of awe and reverence. She knows instinctively that this dream really matters, that it is telling her something of immense importance.  

In each one of us, there is an unlived self that lingers patiently in the shadows of our being. The journey of becoming is the birthing of this hidden self. I was in my early twenties when I was introduced to the writings of the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers. A particular lightbulb moment came when his book, ‘On Becoming a Person', came into my hands. Some fifty years later, I can still remember the impact it had on me. Those three words - ’becoming a person’ - leapt out at me. For months, they hovered persistently on the edge of my awareness and would not let me go. They raised so many questions. What does it mean to become a person? How would I be different if I were to be fully engaged in that process of becoming? How would my life change if I were to find my way to the person I truly am?

Looking back, I realise now that encountering Rogers’ writings was the first significant step on my own journey of becoming. He made me aware of something that many of our wisdom teachers and philosophers have known for centuries. He taught me that from the very first to the very last breath we take, becoming is our natural state as human beings. We do not stop changing and growing once we have left our teenage years behind us and the particular life passages we move through from infancy to adulthood are not the only ones we will experience in our lives. For it takes a lifetime to become.

For those of us who are lucky enough to be brought up and schooled by people who understand this process of becoming and are willing and able to affirm and support us as we begin to embrace it, the journey may be a relatively smooth one. Tragically, however, many of us are not so fortunate. Often through no fault of their own, those who care for us throughout our early years may be ill-equipped to walk alongside us as we journey and sadly, there is little space or time for the soul in many of our schools, colleges and universities. All too often, therefore, our journey of becoming is stopped in its tracks, sometimes for decades.

When we begin to awaken, sometimes we catch a glimpse of our deeper self - perhaps in a dream, perhaps in our imaginings or perhaps in a moment of revelation. We might have a sense of 'coming home' to ourselves, of finding our way to ‘the heart’ of ourselves, of touching the very core of our being, of uncovering the truth of who we are or of our self expanding. Initially, these rare moments of revelation are no more than glimpses which fade all too quickly. But over time, if we attend to them, they may come a little more often and linger a little longer. We may also begin to remember specific parts of ourselves that we have lost along the way: our intuitive and creative self, our masculine or feminine self, our emotional self, our sensual, sexual self or our playful self amongst many others. It may be that we came to see them as unimportant, as not mattering and so relegated them to the back shelves of our lives. Or it may be that that others taught us to see them as bad or shameful, as part of a darker, weaker or flawed side of ourselves that must never see the light of day. The journey of becoming is the unveiling and reclaiming of these long forgotten parts of ourselves.

Giving birth is a powerful metaphor for this process. At one point in my own journey of becoming, I came across an image of a heavily pregnant woman that became very important to me. I knew that I needed to pay attention to this image, that it was charged with meaning for me. From time to time, I would gaze at it for a while, reminding myself that however hard the process of birthing my deeper self might seem and however uncertain the outcome, that which was emerging within me was well worth whatever the journey might ask of me.

Some time ago when I was watching the sun rise over the ocean, I realised that becoming is like the dawning of a new day. As the first rays of the sun appear above the horizon, they cast only a smattering of light on the landscape below. But as the sun continues to rise, the richness and beauty of the landscape is slowly revealed, just as the process of becoming gradually casts light on the inner landscape of our being. To become is to allow and enable the gradual unfolding of this deeper self. It is to shed the protective casing that we have built around it so that we might give it space to breathe, room to emerge, the freedom to become the glorious self that it is meant to be. It is, as the writer John O’Donohue describes it, to ‘swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence.’

©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2025

Bibliography

John O’Donohue (1997) Anam Cara. Bantam Books

Sue Monk Kidd (2016) Dance of the Dissident Daughter. HarperOne

Kaitlyn Steele

www.insearchofsoul.co.uk

kaitlynsteele16@gmail.com