Ep. 15: Feeling Lost? Here's Why

Have you ever looked at your life and thought, When did I stop feeling like myself? In this first episode of the Coming Home to Yourself series on Soul Ignited, Jackie explores how women slowly lose themselves through caregiving, people-pleasing, survival mode, and constantly putting everyone else first.

This episode is a gentle but honest conversation about burnout, disconnection, and the quiet feeling that there has to be more to life than simply going through the motions. If you’ve been feeling emotionally exhausted, unfulfilled, or disconnected from your own desires, this episode will remind you that you are not broken — you may simply be disconnected from yourself.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Signs you may have lost touch with yourself
• How survival mode disconnects us from joy and purpose
• Why women often abandon their own needs
• The difference between surviving and truly living
• Beginning the journey back to yourself

This episode is an invitation to pause, reflect, and reconnect with the parts of yourself that may have been buried beneath responsibilities and expectations.

Let's Connect!

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Soul Ignited Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Meese, and today I'm so excited because we're kicking off a three-part series called Coming Home to Yourself. This series is for the woman who feels disconnected from herself. I'm sure we can all relate, right? The woman who spent years taking care of everyone else, everybody else's needs, everything for everybody. And who wakes up one day and thinks, wait a minute, how did I get here? When did I stop feeling like myself? Do I even remember what that feels like? What happened to the version of me who used to dream? If this resonates with you, I want you to know something right away. You are definitely not alone. So many women quietly lose themselves over time. Not because they're weak, not because they failed in any way, but because life slowly pulls them away from themselves in small, almost invisible ways. It gradually happens, and you don't even realize it's happening until you wake up that one day and think, what happened? How did I get here? Today we're going to talk about how that happens. But first, let's pull a card. Today I'm pulling from the Universe Has Your Back Deck by Gabby Bernstein. I love this deck. It's so positive and so affirming. So let's see what our card is. Through prayer and meditation, I create a ripple effect of peace in the world. That's so beautiful. We have more of an effect on the world than we realize. By putting out good energy and thoughtful energy, um, peaceful energy. We are creating that ripple effect of energy into the world. And it's coming from us, and we think, you know, we're such small players in this big world, but we're not. We have the ability to create change from within. It starts with us, and so by through prayer meditation, um, high vibration, it's contagious, and it creates that ripple effect that spreads from one person to the next person to the next person, and pretty soon that little prayer you said, or that one meditation you did, is creating this wave of peace and hope and positivity. Um, so don't ever think that you have nothing to contribute, that you um, you know, you're just a nobody, you are somebody, and by putting in that contribution, you can create massive change. So I love this card, it's powerful, it's really powerful. Let's get back to coming home to yourself and how we lose ourselves without even realizing it. I think one of the hardest things about losing yourself is that it usually doesn't happen all at once. Like I said, it happens very gradually. You know, we grow up and start our families and do all the things, and then you become the reliable one, right? The caregiver, the helper, the responsible one, the one that everyone depends on, the one that puts everybody else first. And little by little, your own needs move farther down the list. You get put on the back burner, you start to lose touch with what your life was before all the responsibilities and all the people needing all the things from you, all the hats you wear. Maybe at one point you loved being creative or had dreams that excited you and you wanted to pursue those one day. Maybe you felt really connected to your intuition and your joy and your passions. But then life took over, right? Life got busy, responsibilities piled up, school activities, bills, you know, grocery shopping, all the things. People needed you, and survival mode sort of took over. You stop asking yourself what you want because at that point it doesn't really matter anymore, right? That's what we think. It doesn't matter what I need, I'll take care of that later. I gotta take care of this stuff first, these people first. You stop listening to your own voice, you stop checking in with your soul. Eventually, you can find yourself moving through life on autopilot. It becomes Groundhog's Day, right? Have you ever seen that movie? Where it's the same day over and over and over again. You wake up, you get ready, you go do your job, or you take care of the house, or whatever it is you do every day. You make dinner, you tuck the kids in, and you go to bed, and it starts all over again the next day. I think so many women normalize this because it becomes just life. It's just what you do. We just keep going, right? We repeat this cycle every day because that's what you do. But underneath it all, there's often this quiet feeling of emptiness. I'm sure you felt it, I felt it. Not because life is bad, not at all. Um, but because somewhere along the way, you just got disconnected from yourself. Like I said before, you're not a failure, you're not behind, you're just disconnected and forgot that your needs matter. Maybe nobody ever taught you that your needs matter. Maybe it was just ingrained into you that you take care of everybody else, you do what needs to be done. Um, put yourself last. Maybe that was modeled for you. So let's look at what losing yourself looks like. Sometimes it can look like constantly people pleasing. I'm a recovering people pleaser. I just want everybody to be happy, I want everybody to have what they need. I don't want to make waves. I for a long time did things because I thought that's what other people wanted me to do and forgot about my own needs. Another thing is feeling guilty for resting. God forbid we take a nap in the middle of the day, you know. You you feel guilty because you should be doing something, you should be helping someone. Not knowing what brings you joy anymore. That's a big one. Not knowing what brings you joy. What brings you joy? Maybe you've forgotten, maybe you don't even know anymore. Maybe you've gotten so disconnected that you overlook the things that used to bring you joy. Feeling emotionally exhausted. You're just dead tired at the end of the day. You're just over the day, you know? It's definitely a common feeling. Saying yes when you mean no. Oh, that's a big one. Um, again, that people pleasing. You want somebody to be happy or to like you or to have what they need. So you say yes when you really want to say no. You just, it's like an automatic thing. Sure, I can do that. Um, I'll take care of that. Don't worry, whatever. Feeling disconnected from your purpose. Do you even know what your purpose is? And by the way, if you don't, that's something that I can help you do through my work. We forget what our purpose is, or we tend to not even know what it is, who we are, what we're here to do. Uh, because we put ourselves last. And we don't have time for our purpose, honestly. You know, whatever your purpose is, you might feel like you just you don't have time to do that because you're so busy taking care of the rest of your life. So that can that can be a big factor in all of this. Another thing is looking successful on the outside, but feeling completely unfulfilled on the inside. We put on our happy face, right? We go out in public, we um show everybody our highlight reel on Instagram, you know, life is great, everything's going good, look at me, I'm I'm doing it, I'm doing the thing, I'm making it happen, but you're unfulfilled, you're empty inside because you're trying to show the world a piece of you that is non-existent at the moment, but you want everybody to think everything's okay, so you put on this persona when really you feel empty inside, you feel unfulfilled, you feel unhappy and very disconnected. The hard part is sometimes you don't even realize it's happening until one day your soul just starts whispering, there has to be more than this. I think that whisper is sacred. Because it's not telling you to abandon your life, not at all. It's inviting you to reconnect with yourself. If you're getting that nudge, that question is popping up in your head, there has to be more than this. There's gotta be more to life than what this is, and it's not to be unappreciative of what you have or the life that you have. It might be great, but um, there's still that feeling that there has to be, there has to be more. There must be more of what I'm here to do than this. You are not selfish. Let me tell you something so important. You're not selfish for wanting more joy in your life, you're not selfish for needing space, for needing alone time, for needing me time, and you're not selfish for wanting to feel alive again, for wanting to feel that joy within you, that's excited to get up in the morning, that's excited to live your purpose throughout the day. You're not selfish for that. You're human. Your soul was never meant to disappear under the weight of everyone else's expectations. It's time to reclaim that, it's time to reclaim your soul's desire and what it wants and what it needs. Really connect. So I want to invite you to gently reflect on a few questions here. And if you want to take out your journal and write these down and write down your answers or your reflections or your insights, I invite you to do that because I think it's really important and really helpful to see that on paper. When was the last time you truly asked yourself what you wanted? And yes, it's okay to ask yourself that. When was the last time? What parts of yourself have you silenced? What have you outgrown? Sometimes we really have to think about that. Um something that was for us five years ago might not be at all what we want now, or what we're good at now, or what we're a part of now, what we want to be a part of. Are you surviving or are you truly living? Are you just going from day to day and in survival mode and doing the things and you know, like I said, reliving the same day over and over? Or are you living? Are you do you have that joy and excitement to go about your day? Do you have that feeling of I'm so excited about what this day is gonna bring? I'm so grateful for what transpired in this day or this week or this month. Are you truly living? And maybe the biggest question of all what would it look like to start choosing yourself again? What would that look like for you? Would that mean you would spend more time doing the things that you want to do? Or maybe spending more time by yourself to journal or meditate? What would that look like? And answer this question guilt-free. Don't worry about, but I have to. Or what would people think? Just answer from your heart. What would it look like to start choosing yourself again? If today's episode resonated with you, I hope you'll continue with me through this series because next week we're going even deeper. We're going to talk about how to reconnect with the version of yourself that may have gotten buried beneath responsibilities, expectations, fear, and conditioning. And please, I want you to remember this. You're not broken, you're not behind, you've not lost yourself forever, you're not, you know, floating out at sea with no life preserver. The woman you truly are is still in there. And this journey is about coming home to her. Thank you so much for being here with me today. If this episode truly spoke to your heart, I would love for you to leave me a comment, a review, share it with a friend who might need this message too. And until next time, keeping the light for yourself and others and do what ignites your soul. Bye, everyone.