What Happens When You Outgrow Your Own Mythology

Unpacking the moment you realize you’ve changed more than you thought

Origin Stories — Rendered by the author in Midjourney

There’s a strange kind of grief that arrives when the story you once told about yourself — your guiding myth — no longer fits. Especially when it wasn’t just any story, but the story. The one you poured into poems or blogs or old journal entries by the bucketful. The one that helped you survive, make sense of the chaos, and eventually form a self that felt real.

It starts the day you finally go back and revisit it, usually through old personal writing or artwork. You re-read the essay, re-open the journal, pull up the old blog post. And it hits you. You don’t live there anymore.

The Myths We Write Ourselves Into

Whether we think we do or not, we all have personal myths. They’re the stories we cobble together to explain to others (and sometimes ourselves) who we are, why we are, and what we think we’re made of. And they can be based on memories, emotions, trauma, and whatever scraps of meaning we can find to sew the whole mess together.

Although your mileage may vary, my personal myths always sounded a lot like:

• “I’m the forthright, loyal person who always puts others first.”