Worthy and Brave with Ellen Bower

My next Substack Essay published this evening.
Some of you aren't on Substack, so here's the content if you are interested in reading it.

Here's the link if you'd prefer to read it on the Substack App. https://ellenbower.substack.com/p/the-lens-is-our-story

What You Believe About Yourself Becomes Your Life - Whether It’s True or Not

Healing, the stories we inherit, and the quiet power of seeing differently.

ELLEN BOWER
MAY 27, 2026

A personal essay | Ageing, Raging and Saging | Worthy and Brave

What you believe about yourself becomes your life - whether it’s true or not.

And most of us didn’t choose those beliefs consciously.

We inherited them.
We absorbed them.
We learned them slowly, without noticing.

There comes a moment - often after forty, after heartbreak or exhaustion - when a woman realises something quietly life-altering:

It was never just what happened.
It was the story she told herself about it.

The lens is the story.

It’s not the event itself. It's not only what happened. Not even always what was said.

It’s the meaning we wrapped around it. The way we learned - consciously or unconsciously - to see ourselves inside it.

And that lens becomes the architecture of a life.
Two people can live through similar experiences and emerge with entirely different relationships to themselves.

One woman experiences abandonment and concludes: "I was never enough."

Another experiences abandonment and eventually understands: "I was never meant to abandon myself trying to keep someone else."

Same wound. Different lens. Different life.

Sometimes, for decades, we don’t realise we are looking through inherited glass.

We see ourselves through the fears of our mothers.
Through the silence of our grandmothers.
Through religion, culture, and partners—
through trauma, heartbreak, comparison, rejection, and survival.

And then we mistake the lens for truth.

You might recognise yourself here, not in every line - but in one of them:

A child who was criticised may grow into a woman who believes she must earn rest.
A woman betrayed may begin seeing every relationship through anticipation of loss.
A person who was unseen may either disappear further … or spend decades performing for validation.

The lens becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Not because life is punishing us. But because perception quietly directs behaviour.

What we believe shapes what we tolerate.
What we tolerate shapes what we experience.

And what we experience reinforces the original story.

This is why healing is not simply about “thinking positively.”

It is not bypassing pain with affirmations while the nervous system still trembles beneath the surface.

Real healing asks:
What story have I been seeing my life through?

And perhaps even more courageously:
Who would I be without it?

Because eventually, if we are willing, life begins inviting us toward a different way of seeing.

Not naïve. Not delusional. Not spiritually performative.
But wider. And softer. And more truthful.

We begin to understand that anger can be sacred information.

That pain is not always proof of punishment.
That endings are not always failures.
That grief can crack open dormant tenderness.
That boundaries are not cruelty.
That slowing down is not laziness.
That our sensitivity was never the problem.
That intuition often whispers long before suffering finally forces us to listen.

We begin to see that some relationships arrived not to complete us, but to reveal us.

Some people were mirrors. Some were teachers. Some were catalysts for the parts of ourselves we had abandoned. Some repeated family wounds so we could finally choose differently.

And this is where the lens changes everything.

Because when we see life only through victimhood, we remain trapped inside the wound forever.

But when we begin viewing our experiences through meaning, responsibility, awareness, and compassionate truth, suffering can become transformation.

Not instantly. Not romantically. And not without grieving.

But gradually.

The lens shifts

From: Why is this happening to me?
To: What is this asking me to see?

From: Life is against me.
To: Something within me is trying to awaken.

From: I am broken.
To: I am becoming conscious.

And perhaps this is what aging truly offers us when we allow it.

Not simply wrinkles or wisdom clichés. But perspective. The ability to revisit our own lives with gentler eyes.

To realise our younger selves were often surviving with the tools they had.

To stop defining ourselves solely by the hardest chapter.

To recognise that healing ancestral patterns does not require blaming those who came before us - only refusing to keep handing the wound forward unchanged.

There is profound power in becoming the woman who changes the lens. The woman who no longer interprets rest as weakness.

Pleasure as selfishness. Emotion as instability. Aging as irrelevance. Softness as fragility. Visibility as danger. Joy as something she must earn through suffering first.

Because once the lens changes, the story changes too.

And when the story changes, possibility enters.

Suddenly healing is no longer about becoming someone else. It becomes remembering who you were before fear taught you to see yourself through distortion.

Perhaps that is the real work now.

Not building a perfect life. Not endlessly fixing ourselves. Not chasing enlightenment while abandoning embodiment.

But learning to look again.

At our bodies. At our histories. At our mistakes, At our mothers. At our daughters. At our heartbreaks. At our desires. At our becoming.

To look at all of that with more honesty, more compassion, more consciousness, more courage.

The lens is our story.

And sometimes the most radical thing a woman can do is sit quietly with her own life - all of it, the wreckage and the beauty.

You are more than the hardest thing that ever happened to you.

Perhaps you are reading this and recognising yourself already. Not only in the words, but in the quiet ache beneath them.

And perhaps now the question becomes: how do we begin changing the lens when it has shaped us for so long?

I offer what follows not as a formula, but as a doorway back to yourself. Return to whichever one finds you first.

Notice the Story Beneath the Reaction

Pause whenever something emotionally activates you and ask: What story am I telling myself right now?
Is this reaction coming from the present moment, or an older wound?

Who taught me to see myself this way?

Is this objectively true - or deeply familiar?

Revisit Old Childhood Memories with Adult Eyes
You’re not rewriting history. You’re not bypassing pain. You’re revisiting younger versions of yourself with compassion instead of criticism.

See the exhausted mother with tenderness,
See the people-pleasing woman with understanding,
See the younger self not as weak but surviving.

Become Aware of Inherited Lenses

I invite you to reflect on the beliefs, perspectives, and inherited assumptions you carry:

Your views on aging (are you getting older or are you growing more ‘seasoned’),

How should you be ‘visible’ in life (quietly in the background or boldly as someone of worth),

Is rest deserved or earned ,

What makes you worthy for what you desire in life,

Is love conditional or unconditional – from others and for others,

What body image is authentic (the one that exists in nature, or the one that exists on social media),

How much, and in what ways, should you express your emotions (are you here to NOT make others uncomfortable or to authentically be who you came here to be),

What must you sacrifice to have what you truly desire (or, why can’t you have both).

Ask yourself questions such as:
Did this belief originate with me? What did the women before me have to believe in order to survive? Do I still want to carry this forward?

Practice “Different Seeing”

Notice beauty differently. Notice possibility differently. Notice evidence of safety, goodness, connection and growth differently. Not with toxic positivity – only with intentional perception.

An example might be: A difficult ending can simultaneously be grief and liberation.

This is where wisdom lives.

Speak to Yourself as Someone You Are Responsible for Loving

Many of us do not realise how brutal our internal voice has become - how routine the cruelty, how automatic the criticism. It has simply become the weather inside. We would never speak to someone we loved the way we speak to ourselves before we have even gotten out of bed in the morning.

One question can interrupt that pattern more gently than almost anything else: would I speak to my daughter this way? To a younger woman I loved? To a friend sitting across from me in pain?

If the answer is no - and it almost always is - then you already know what needs to change. Not dramatically. Just one degree kinder. One shade softer. Beginning today.

Release Your Loyalty to the Wound

Some people become so identified with pain that they cannot imagine themselves beyond it.

You might explore honouring suffering without building identity around it, allowing healing without guilt, releasing loyalty to old pain.

Curate the Lens

What we consume shapes perception: media, conversations, relationships, social media, nervous system environments.

As women, we often don’t realise we are living inside atmospheres that reinforce fear, inadequacy, urgency, comparison, or despair.

Try inviting more of these gifts of life: innate beauty, slowness, grounded voices, honest conversations,nourishing environments.

I leave you with one core truth …
I’m curious - what’s one belief about yourself that you’re beginning to question?

Not the polished answer. The honest one.
If something in this feels uncomfortably familiar, that’s not a coincidence.

Healing is not pretending the pain never happened.
Healing is no longer seeing yourself only through the pain.

Your intention here is not to erase the story.

Your intention is to stop seeing yourself only through the hardest parts of it.

With love and grace, and the full force of a woman learning that healing is not found in rewriting the past, but in changing the way she holds it now, Ellen

Worthy and Brave™ | Aging, Raging and Saging

If this essay found you standing inside an old story about yourself, perhaps this is your invitation to loosen your grip on the lens you inherited. The lens can change. And so can the life that is looking through it. You are allowed to see yourself - and your life - through kinder eyes now.

New here? Start with the Letters to Her Series Introduction - and then stay. This is a space for women who are done being efficient in the wrong direction.

What You Believe About Yourself Becomes Your Life - Whether It’s True or Not Healing, the stories we inherit, and the quiet power of seeing differently.

My first Substack Essay is now published.

(Dedicated to the amazing Golden Retreiver 'mum', Judy Alden, who just departed this earthly life.)

"What My Dogs Know That I Am Still Learning."

What My Dogs Know That I Am Still Learning ESSAY: The quiet intelligence of creatures who never needed to earn their worthiness.

My latest article on Substack in the series Letters to Her is for you if you are feeling like you are in the ‘In-Between’!

Letters to Her Dear the Me on the Threshold

My article for this week in the ‘Letters to Her’ series just dropped on Substack.

This one is on Belonging!

Letters to Her Dear The Me Who Never Felt Like She Belonged

I was reminded about this amazing video today and thought I’d share it with you.
You may have likely seen this before as it’s been around for years.
Enjoy it again!
It’s so profound and makes me pause …
💕💕💕

Universe Size Comparison | Cosmic Eye (Original HD) This is the original landscape-format version of the short movie Cosmic Eye, created by the channel owner, astrophysicist Danail Obreschkow. The movie zooms ...

Link to my Substack in my Linktree in Bio

My latest Substack - Letters to Her - No.3 The Folder Called ‘Almost Good Intentions’

Letters to Her - The folder called “Almost Good Intentions” Unfinished things are very good at keeping you safe.

Dear ‘The Me Who Kept Apologising’

Letters to Her Dear The Me Who Kept Apologising

Cannot put into words how much I love this masterpiece writing by James McRae. It embraces the soul of everything I know to be true, and it’s the heart of my work at Worthy and Brave.

Have a look at his Substack. It is food for the Soul. 💜

***********************************

Instructions before visiting Earth
By James McRae

In the event that you wake up
and find your soul separated from source
and manifest into material form, don’t panic.
Your condition is only temporary.

You have been selected for the opportunity
of human incarnation.

This 3D simulation is designed
to break up the monotony of eternity
by giving you a fully immersive experience
as a distinct ego identity.

Your body will serve
as your physical avatar
as you navigate a dense and dramatic reality.
There will be many distractions
causing you to forget your true nature and origin.
You will experience a range of emotions
from joy to loneliness to despair.

But remember – no matter
what trials and traumas you encounter,
your soul remains perfectly safe.

At times you may feel lost or afraid.
This is totally normal.
If you ever need guidance,
simply slow down your busy mind
and bring your awareness
to the quiet place
inside yourself.

On this planet, nothing is permanent.
People and things will come and go.
You will fall in love and form sentimental attachments
only to lose everything you hold dear.

So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself,
and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace,
for nothing is owned, only borrowed.

As you walk among
the people on the planet,
try to be a good guest.
Tread lightly. Remember
that you are only visiting.
Don’t make a mess.
Listen more than you speak.
Give more than you take.

Don’t keep your soft heart
locked inside a glass cage,
protected from wear and tear.

You’ll never make it out alive
and time passes quickly.
So come back with some battle scars
and good stories to tell.

Instructions before visiting Earth A poem for the soul's journey

You’ve been promoted to ‘Creator of Your Own Life’. Go do amazing things for YOU!

There is a woman I think about often.
She is twenty-two. She is bright and capable and working extremely hard at something most people around her cannot see — the full-time job of appearing to have it together. She performs confidence in the boardroom and ease at the party and independence in her relationships, and she does all of it so convincingly that nobody thinks to ask how she really is.
I was her. And I suspect, in some version or another, so were you.
This is the first letter in my 'Letters to Her' series — letters written to a younger self, carrying the things I wish someone had told her. Not to rewrite the past, but to offer something to the women reading now who might still be in the middle of their own performance.
If you have ever exhausted yourself being someone people could admire, rather than someone they could truly know — this one is for you.
Ellen

Letters to Her A limited recurring column of letters written to my younger self