After more than thirty years as a psychotherapist and a spiritual seeker, I have come to believe one simple thing: if I want to truly enjoy this journey through life, I must find a way to claim myself. That phrase has deepened and evolved for me over the years, but its heart has remained the same. To claim myself means to listen inwardly, to trust the quiet truth of who I am, and to live from that truth even when the world offers doubt, limitation, or fear. It means recognizing that my life is not something handed to me from the outside. It is something I participate in, shape, and honor from within.
As early as I can remember, even as a child, I carried a strong sense of who I was. I did not always have the words for it, and I certainly did not understand where it came from, but it lived in me as naturally as breath. I knew I loved sports. I loved competing with boys on the basketball court, in stickball games in the driveway, and in kickball on neighborhood streets. I felt comfortable in my body when I was running, catching, throwing, and hitting a ball. There was a sense of freedom there, a kind of wordless belonging. I also became obsessed with baseball and with baseball players. In fourth grade, I would go to the library and read biographies of athletes, imagining that maybe one day I would become the first female baseball player. By fifth grade, when adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had two answers without hesitation: I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be the first female baseball player.
I do not know exactly why I had such a strong sense of self so early in life. Perhaps some children are born closer to their inner voice. Perhaps some hear it before the world gets too loud. What I do know is that somewhere inside me there was always a voice stronger than fear; it’s stronger than approval, stronger even than my own uncertainty. That voice guided me toward my own unfolding. It was as if something deep within me kept whispering, This is your life. Trust it. Follow it. That voice appeared again in high school when I was applying to colleges. I knew with absolute certainty that I wanted to go to Boston University; however, my guidance counselor looked at my grades and SAT scores and told me there was no way I would get in. I was a good student, but not the kind of student she believed belonged at such a university. Her judgment was practical, reasonable, and discouraging. But that same inner voice rose up in me and said, I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m applying anyway. I trusted that feeling more than the statistics, more than the prediction, more than the authority sitting across from me. And I got in. Looking back, that moment taught me something I would spend the rest of my life considering in depth: there are times when believing in myself is the first act of becoming myself.
In college, I first majored in English literature and later changed to communications, but within both paths I remained devoted to language, stories, and the life of the mind. I always knew I wanted to write. Literature did more than educate me; it opened me. When I read the great writers, I felt they were not only telling remarkable stories but also mapping the inner landscape of human transformation. Through their work, I saw how people confronted sorrow, confusion, longing, darkness, and even hope. I realized that a human life is not a fixed identity but a journey through challenge, insight, and change. In a very real way, literature became one of the first places where I learned that selfhood is something we discover, lose, recover, and reshape many times over. At the same time, I was becoming a spiritual seeker. I’d been raised Jewish, but I did not experience God as a distant figure outside of me. I searched for something more intimate, more immediate, something I could feel in my own living experience. By the time I was nineteen, I’d fallen in love with jazz, an interest that began when I was sixteen. Jazz felt alive to me in a way I could not fully explain. It was the improvisation, discipline, the soul, risk, and the freedom all at once. I often went to jazz clubs in Boston by myself, and in those vibrant rooms, I stood close to a mysterious force.
One of the most remarkable turns in my life came through that love of jazz. I met the legendary Herbie Hancock, who—to my amazement—was kind to me and introduced me to Buddhism. I still remember the exact moment I heard during a Buddhist meeting that my Buddha nature existed inside me. Something in me immediately answered, Yes. That’s it. That is what I’ve been reaching for all along. The idea that enlightenment, wisdom, courage, and dignity were not bestowed from the outside; but already lived within me was something I’d always intuitively felt. My truest authority did not come from approval, status, or external permission; it came from the sacred life within me. From that point on, claiming myself became inseparable from honoring that inner life. My spiritual practice also shaped my path as a writer. I began writing for the World Tribune, the Buddhist newspaper, and although the work was unpaid at first, I loved it. I interviewed people who practiced Buddhism and wrote about the ways they had transformed their suffering, challenged their fears, and refused to give up on their lives. Again and again, I encountered the same essential truth: every human being carries enormous potential, even when they cannot yet see it. People can heal. People can rise. People can challenge the beliefs that have imprisoned them and move toward lives of purpose, love, and contribution. Writing such stories strengthened my own conviction that the journey inward is never selfish; it’s the foundation of real growth.
At twenty-six, I made another inward declaration: I wanted to be a professional writer. It was not merely an ambition; it was a claim. I’d already been writing, already practicing, already following the thread of my identity, but now I named it with authority. Around that same time, my love of jazz led me into another unforgettable moment of self-claiming. I read an article in Ebony magazine about a young girl named Terri Lyne Carrington, who was already an extraordinary jazz drummer at the age of eleven or twelve. I was thrilled—not only because she was talented, but because she represented something powerful to me: a young female musician moving with brilliance and confidence through a world largely dominated by men. I wanted to meet her. More than that, I wanted to write about her. I had no clear plan, no introduction, and no guarantee that it would ever happen. And yet, I carried the intention with me as if it already had become a part of my future. Then one night, while out listening to music, I saw Terri Lyne Carrington and her father walk into the club. I remember the surge of recognition, the moment when destiny meets opportunity and asks, Are you going to step forward or stay silent? I walked up to her father, Sonny Carrington, with very few credentials but a great deal of hope, and I asked if I could write about his daughter. He said yes. That article became my first professional piece, published in Soul Teen magazine. What stays with me is not only the success of that moment, but the lesson behind it: when I claim my desire honestly and courageously, life often meets me halfway.
Over time, through my work as a therapist, my spiritual life, my writing, my suffering, and my healing, I have come to understand that the relationship I have with myself is the most important relationship in my life. Not because other people do not matter—they matter deeply—but because every experience I have passes through the lens of how I know myself, how I treat myself, and whether I am willing to be present with what lives inside me. Many people move through life disconnected from their own inner world. We are busy. We are overstimulated. We scroll on our phones, react to the world, chase obligations, and fill every empty space with noise. We can be connected to everyone and everything but still remain strangers to ourselves. That’s why I believe claiming myself requires practice. It’s not a slogan or a mood, but a way of being in relationship with my own mind, heart, body, and soul. Over the years, I have distilled this into three essential steps that have helped both me and many of my clients transform their lives. They are simple, but not superficial. They ask for honesty. They ask for courage. And most of all, they ask for presence.
I need to listen to them. Too often, we push away what hurts, thinking that denial is strength. But when I reject my feelings, I reject parts of myself. Acceptance does not mean I act impulsively on every emotion or believe every thought I think. It means I sit beside myself with compassion and say, I am here. I want to understand. You are not too much for me. The third step is productive action. Once I become aware and accepting, I can ask, What is the most productive action I can take right now? That question opens the door to change. It invites possibility. Productive action might mean having a difficult conversation, asking for help, setting a boundary, returning to prayer, going for a walk, writing in a journal, beginning therapy, forgiving myself, or simply choosing not to repeat an old destructive pattern. The point is not perfection. The point is movement. Claiming myself requires that I act in ways that align with the truth I am discovering within. I have seen again and again that many of us carry younger wounded parts inside ourselves—parts formed in childhood, in heartbreak, in loss, in moments when we were unseen, shamed, abandoned, or afraid. Those younger parts do not disappear simply because we grow older. They wait inside us, asking to be heard. If we ignore them, they often shape our lives in hidden ways. They influence our choices, our relationships, our fears, and our self-image. But when we begin this process of awareness, acceptance, and productive action, we slowly bring those younger parts into healing. We stop abandoning ourselves. We become trustworthy to ourselves. And that changes everything.
Claiming oneself is not a one-time achievement. It is a lifelong journey of returning. I have practiced it through joy and heartbreak, through success and uncertainty, through seasons when I felt radiant and seasons when I felt lost. And now, as I turn seventy-three, I realize that in some ways I may still be at the beginning. But that does not discourage me. In fact, it fills me with awe. To keep discovering who I am, to keep softening into truth, to keep meeting life with greater honesty and tenderness—what a gift that is. I have come to love not only my successes but also my suffering, because so much of it has taught me how to come home to myself. I honor the obstacles I have overcome and the innocence that still lives in me. That little girl who knew she wanted to be a writer was not wrong. She was listening. And yes, while I never became the first female baseball player, I still step onto the softball field on Sundays with almost all men, and I do more than hold my own. That is also a kind of claiming.
If there is one thing I know now, it is this: no one else can claim me for me. No title, relationship, achievement, spiritual teaching, or applause can do that inner work on my behalf. Others can guide me, love me, support me, and reflect me back to myself, and those gifts matter deeply. But the sacred responsibility of claiming my life belongs to me. It belongs to the quiet decisions I make every day to listen inwardly, to tell myself the truth, to stay present to my pain, and to move toward what is alive and authentic in me. To claim myself is to say: I am here. I am listening. I am willing to know who I am and become who I am meant to be. I trust that my deepest wisdom is not absent, only waiting. I believe that even after disappointment, failure, aging, grief, and change, there is still something whole in me that cannot be taken away. When I live from that place, I do not become fearless, but I do become free. And in that freedom, I find the courage to keep walking this beautiful, unfinished road home to myself.