Who Are You?

Kerrie Jones • November 12, 2024

When faced with the question of “Who are you?”, many people really don’t know the answer. It’s a sad reality that we know so little about the person whom we walk around with all day every day, yet if I were to ask you about the other people in your world, you’d be able to answer the question with great accuracy.

I know, you probably don’t think you fall into this category because as you’ve begun thinking about who you are, you’ve come up with quite a few adjectives to describe yourself. I’d like to challenge you, however, to remove all descriptors that associate you with someone else, like mother, sister, friend, and even giver. The question is more about who you are at your core, independent of others. If there was no one else around, who would you be? What would exist in your world? What would motivate you? What would please you?


Many of us are so “other” focused that we haven’t taken the time to get to know ourselves, the most important person in our world; and if we don’t know ourselves, what exactly are we doing with the brief life we’re given? How can we be confident that we’re making the most of everyday? We can’t.


If you’re struggling to describe yourself, you don’t truly know yourself; and if you don’t know yourself, you can’t live for yourself. If this is you, I invite you to turn off autopilot and to take the time survey your life with clear focus of yourself in it, so you can live! You may be wondering how to do that, and there are many ways to go about it; I’ll give you a few to get you going.


1.    Notice yourself. Take time every day, if possible, during your optimal time of day (i.e., mornings for a morning person) to simply breathe deeply and notice your breath. If you’ve never done this, it can bring up emotions for you. If you can tolerate it, allow the emotions to come as you continue to notice your breath. If this is unbearable, be compassionate with yourself and don’t push. Grab a drink of water and bring your attention to the space outside of yourself to get back to safety.

2.    Journal. Journaling is a great way to discover your thoughts and feelings. Again, your optimal time of day is the best time to journal, and you can journal about anything. The best way to approach journaling is to write like no one else will read it. After finishing, read back what you’ve written. If necessary, destroy and discard your journal entries to protect your heart from others.

3.    Discover your core values. Core values are deeply connected to our beliefs, and when we operate from them our actions are more intentional and aligned with who we are or who we want to be. We all have core values, even if we don’t recognize it. When we acknowledge our core values, we use them as our guiding light as we move through the world. When we fail to act with our core values in mind, often we experience shame, regret, and resentment. If you need help with discovering your core values, simply search “core values” on the internet and you’ll find sites that provide lists of examples. Once you discover your core values, I invite you to analyze them to determine if they truly resonate with you, or if they’re what you “should” choose based on your environment or upbringing. If it’s the latter, scrap them and try again.

4.    Look in the mirror. Spend time looking at yourself in the mirror. What do you see? What do you like? Why? What don’t you like? Why? What would it be like to accept and embrace it all without attempting to change it? (Side note: these are great prompts for journaling.) When looking in the mirror, it’s important to note that what we see on ourselves is often reflective of what we see in ourselves. Many people want to change the outside, when really, it’s the inside we want to change. We all have the power to change, and acceptance is the first step. Remember, nothing in this world exists without positives and negatives, not even atoms. Our negative attributes provide balance; sometimes accepting them is all that’s needed.

5.    Therapy. Therapy is a great place to learn about yourself; after all, it is all about you. In therapy you talk quite a bit, and then listen with the goal of gaining more insight into the way you exist in the world. Without help, many of us will sleepwalk through life and face many regrets. We are thinking, speaking, and behaving, and we don’t always know the why that’s at the root of it all. It is not a place to be told what to do, but rather to learn who you are so you can achieve your goals. Keep in mind, not all therapists are created equal. One attribute of a great therapist is their ability to take your words and to use them as a mirror for you to see your emotional and psychological self more clearly. If you find a therapist who can do this, you’re likely on your way to better knowing yourself. If you believe you can’t afford therapy, many states have agencies that offer low-cost options. In California, there’s Southern California Counseling Center, they offer low-cost therapy with pre-licensed counselors.

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Woman peacefully journaling

Protecting My Peace

By Kerrie Hudson • March 10, 2026
There’s a lot of talk about protecting one’s peace these days, but what does that even mean? And how do you protect your peace? Let’s dig in. Peace is an emotion. In psychology there are five basic emotions that are widely accepted: anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and happiness. Unfortunately, of the five only one would be considered a positive emotion, though I believe all are positive in that they provide you with information. But I digress. Happiness, the more positive of the five is the one emotion you likely welcome with open arms, and when it comes, you want it to stay. You protect it. Peace lives on the spectrum of happiness, and like all other emotions, it is literally a feeling in the body. It feels like serenity; there’s stillness and a calm that comes over you. I’ve had folks identify peace in their bodies as the absence of the feelings they’re accustomed to: tightness in their chest, sweaty palms, stomach discomfort, etc. For many, peace is rarely felt, so when they feel it, or any other emotion for that matter, they fail to recognize the environment that nurtured it; and if you’re going to protect your peace, you’ve got to notice when you feel it and what contributed to it. Understanding peace as an emotion is necessary because the role of your emotions is to provide you with information about your environment. At times, emotions can be so intense and distressing that the focus shifts from the environment that ignited them, to suppressing or extinguishing them. But emotions aren’t the problem, the environment is. Every emotion is important, even those that you’ve identified as negative. They tell you that something in your circumstances or environment needs your attention, and when you ignore your emotions, you ignore the task at hand. Peace is a gift, and not everybody or every environment offers it. When you notice peace in your body, you also need to notice what nurtured it. Are there people who bring peace? Are there places where you feel more at ease? Identifying these sources gives you what you need to take care of yourself by accessing more of it. On the other hand, where do you experience the opposite of peace? Where, and with whom do you find chaos and confusion? If you’re going to protect your peace, these are environments and people who you need to limit contact with. If you’re going to protect your peace, you’ve gotta increase your self-connection by noticing your emotions, and allowing them to tell you what you need to increase your overall well-being. When you fight your emotions, you fight yourself and your best interests. Extended periods of suppressing emotions can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions because two things are working against you: you are becoming more disconnected from yourself while existing in environment that don’t serve you. There’s no magic pill that creates more peace and happiness, it’s the consistent work of nurturing self-connection and meeting your needs, because you are the most important person in your world. May you grow exponentially in peace! If this resonated with you, you’re not alone. These are the conversations we continue inside Next Chapter: Notes from The Other Side, my monthly newsletter where I share insights, reflections, and guidance for women breaking toxic patterns and learning how to love themselves differently. Join Next Chapter here

The One Thing Standing Between You & Success

By Kerrie Hudson • February 8, 2026
The new year typically comes with a desire to be successful in an area where winning has been challenging. As such, we spend time thinking about what we want for the year ahead and commit to doing things that will help us achieve our goals. The challenge many of us run into is that we quit on our goals before we can clear the first few months of the year; so, while January is still with us, I want to share with you some information about what I believe to be the number killer of success, anxiety, and how to overcome it so you can have a greater chance at winning this year. Regardless of your goals, anxiety has a way of stepping in and stealing your motivation before you can gain much momentum. It’s the quiet voice lurking in the background telling you that you can’t have what you really want because it’s too hard, or you’re not good enough, or if you do attain it, something terrible will come along and take it away. Essentially, anxiety is at the heart of why you settle; you’ve listened to that little fearful voice that’s informed only by your limited experience and/or imagination, and convinced yourself you can’t have the thing you deeply desire; so your only option is to go without the tightened body, or the love you deserve, or the business that would positively impact the lives of others, which ultimately leaves you dissatisfied and even regretful. You’ve given up on your goals and dreams because of something that might happen, but probably won’t. If you’re going to disrupt this cycle the key is to challenge your ego. Many people believe the issue with the ego is cockiness and arrogance that leads one to see themselves as above others, and while that’s true, what most people fail to understand is the arrogance in perceiving fear as fact versus seeing it as just one of many possibilities. When you see your fears as fact you treat them as certainty and you make decisions that align with them, ultimately shortchanging yourself of the life you deserve. In reality, the ego can work for or against you, and combined with anxiety, an unhealthy ego will kill your ability to enjoy your life and achieve your goals. So, if you you’re going to succeed in anything and have a good time doing it, you must check your ego and anxiety so they don’t keep you in a constant state of settling in fear. If left unchecked, the ego will convince you not to invest too much or not to try too hard because “this probably won’t even work”, or “nothing good ever happens for me”. It will see losses as catastrophic events and overinflate the importance of a few outside opinions. Its goal is to keep you safe, when in reality, the things that pose a threat to you are likely not threatening at all. The key is balancing the ego by removing certainty from your beliefs, because anything that hasn’t yet happened isn’t certain, it’s a possibility. When you begin to see your fears as possibilities you can move from a place of guardedness to a place of curiosity; this helps you to open yourself to more possibilities than the one rooted in your fears, and when you see more possibilities, you can free yourself to take risks (which is necessary to succeed). With this shift, you can begin to see losses as lessons so you can use your setbacks as a setup to do better, to refine your approach, to put the proper supports in place; and as your gain more experience, you’ll begin to see realistic likelihoods of what can happen over possibilities and certainties, reducing the size of your fears. You begin to think “if I take these steps, it is possible that I won’t achieve my goal, but it is likely that I’ll be closer to it than if I settle here”, and when you take on this perspective beautiful things happen.