How to Remember Your Sovereign Self
Meaning and Purpose as Inner Compass
“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.” Annie Dillard
This past week I brought my three kids down for a day trip to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. They had not had the experience of going there yet, and in PA the Monday after Thanksgiving the schools are out.
Seeing the Holocaust through the eyes of my kids, witnessing their faces as they viewed graphic scenes of the horrors was, among many things, humbling. There were no words other than me assuring them that any response–such as feeling as if they felt sick–was okay. We read aloud the names of the victims on the identification cards that each visitor receives when they go to the museum. We lit candles. We cried.
We shook hands with Ruth Cohen, one of the last remaining survivors of the Holocaust. We were stunned with gratitude for her presence and witness. She thanked us, too, which nearly blew me over. She was 14 when she was liberated from the Polish ghettos, having lost most of her family from the killing camps. But here she was, smiling with us, laughing, eyes blazing as only a truth-tellers are, telling her story to visitor after visitor.
When we left, we had an opportunity to write in the guest book our reactions. How are there words?
My littlest wrote, “Never forget.” We signed our names beneath.
Never forget.
But as we left the museum and moved out into the bright sunshine, walking back to our car and back to our lives, it felt in stark contrast to the darkness that knocks on my heart. Part of me knew that this not forgetting was exactly the work.
Not forgetting is the work.
I forget that each and every person on this plane of earth is my sibling, and they mine, when I don’t honor myself and my sovereignty. When I neglect my voice, when I choose not to speak up–even in the smallest of ways–I am complicit to allowing my voice to remain unused when so many have none.
Everything in our ego wants to forget horrors that persist in the world, the challenges that seem like such uphill climbs, wants to spiritually bypass over our traumas and collective wounds and heavy lifts. Oh how we crave forgetting. We scroll, we numb, we eat, we worry, we rage. Somehow, that makes it feel better, for a time, yet we remain here.
I’m finding that remembering starts with me, every day, when I remember my self and honor who I am: my sovereign self, wholly whole, sacred, known, and imperfect.
The Way of the Healer
When I speak with groups of healers–in therapy practices or in clergy and chaplaincy retreats–when I ask about whether feeling connected to their call is important, I see heads nod enthusiastically. We get it. When we don’t feel like there is meaning or purpose in our lives, when we are disconnected from the service of giving, we are left shells of ourselves. Our lives become unmanageable, we become addicted. Lost.
The way of the healer is the way of service.
But finding meaning and purpose is not about our roles as healers. It doesn’t even need to be our work. The spiritual connection to giving is beyond any role or version of your self projected into the world. Many, if not most, of the healers and helpers I know have ways they are creative and feel connected to giving outside of their work. This is the fuel that offers the nourishment to continue to be of service.
Where we go wrong, though, and where I did for years, is to believe that I have the power or claim to be whole or part of the healing. The educational system, the system of continuing education and licensure laws set us up: if you get this amount of training, get this amount of extra credits to your name, then you are a legitimate healer. If you get this credential or degree—here’s your cap and gown—you’ve made it! Our egos claim a part of these roles, feeding a sense that we have to be a certain way to be approved in some way. And for us licensed counselors, when the two year mark comes around again, we have to prove ourselves to licensing boards once again to claim some sort of legitimacy in the eyes of others.
While some kind of legitimization of the healer makes sense in the capitalist world where making money is based on a given commodity, if we’re not careful, we will begin to believe this about our healer spirits.
But we aren’t commodities.
Duty or Soul?
I am realizing more and more that my duty is not to claim to be healing agent in any way for suffering– my own, my client’s, my neighbors, my community, the aching world. I’m wondering that in instead the call is to be the conduit of healing that is through me and not me. Perhaps I don’t need to do anything, other than to not forget. I have agency in the world to be useful and of service–not of me, or even for me or my clients, but through me.
Of course this is the foundation of most all ancient spiritual traditions– that we are called to let go of ego-binding conditions in order to allow in connection and unity. We don’t need to be necessarily spiritual to do this kind of allowing. We just need to be awake.
This is the core of resistance to all oppression. Claiming self and sovereignty despite systems that create such suffering, despite the rising tides of hate, despite despair, is as simple as showing up and being awake. Stepping out of ego-grasping and into claiming: It begins with me.
Maybe it can begin with remembering. We often have hints as to our power and purpose in childhood:
When did you feel a sense of deep power and presence of self as a child? Remember a time that you stood up for yourself, or for others. How did that feel? What does that tell you about what matters to you, now?
How did your voice change through the years? When has it become a whisper, and when has it yelled? What was each of those times like?
When did you find your strength despite adversity? Give an example that feels potent in your body, spirit, or memory. When you sit with those feelings, what does it tell you about your sovereign self?
Where has your power been taken? Where have you claimed it again, even in small pieces? How can you find your power again?
Holocaust survivor Elise Wiesel knows about the essential power of claiming our posture towards our agency: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Becoming awake to me is realizing that I do have power and agency, starting with my own voice. I move from complicity to resistance to systems of oppression when I choose to see, know, and never forget my voice.
Begin Within
I don’t claim to understand in any small way the kind of resistance and resilience Ruth needed to persist, but I can hear her story and not forget it. I can’t claim to understand the tears of another’s pain, but I can bear witness. I can’t claim to know how to raise children in this culture, but I can teach them how to use their voices. I can’t claim to know how to build a sustainable business that is decolonial, but I can try. I can’t claim to know where my clients have been, but I can offer an unwavering sense of deep care. I can be present to fear, I can be present to creativity, wonder and laughter. Joy is transformation.
It begins within, always.
What yours is to do only comes out of who you are. And who you are is deeply sacred. Connecting to that spirit of wholeness within is the beginning of knowing what wholeness–and healing–can look like for all of us, step by step.
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Two upcoming offerings to drop into your sovereign self:
One on One soul care sessions to intentionally move into the new year, filled with inner listening spiritual practices: Threshold Sessions now enrolling through Jan 2026.
Join me in our Year Ahead Retreat—nourish your soul, turn the page into the new year, and find your center, together.
Not sure? Email me here and we’ll connect! allie@rootgrowthrive.com
