The Most Controversial Thing I Do Is Tell My Story
A re-introduction to The Rebirth Files
The Rebirth Files started with a feeling I couldn’t quite figure out on my own, and a blank Google doc that felt like the only place honest enough to hold everything I’ve been privately processing.
I’m writing this because some people in my life (people I love) have found themselves confused by it. And instead of letting that confusion keep moving through group chats and secondhand phone calls that never seem to find their way back to me, I’d rather just say it all here.
To everyone at once.
Whether you’ve been here from the start, just found your way in, or landed here by accident. I hope you’ll stay. Family, friends, curious strangers: you’re all welcome.
What It Feels Like to Have Something That Needs to Be Said
Let me try to explain what this feels like from the inside, because I think that’s actually where the disconnect lives.
Most of us were never really taught what to do with the parts of ourselves that don’t yet have a clear answer. We picked up, somewhere along the way, that the right thing to do is wait. Usually, you figure it out first and then come back once you have something resolved to share.
Most of us carry things quietly and keep moving. We say we’re fine, and often we are, but underneath, there’s a quiet hum of what goes unspoken. For me, that hum only grew as life got more demanding.
I tried a lot of things. Journaling privately? Couldn’t keep consistent with it. Processing things in my head while practicing yoga? That just went in circles. What actually worked was writing it out and finding real sentences for the feeling.
That’s how I figured out what I actually thought and what I actually believed. Sometimes I genuinely didn’t know until I was mid-sentence and the words just appeared on my screen like they’d been there the whole time, waiting.
So I started writing more and more, and eventually, I started sharing.
That’s where it got more complicated, and also somehow so much more real.
Why Public, Though
This is the part that genuinely confuses people. Honestly, a few years ago, it would have confused me, too.
If this is so personal, why not keep it private? Why share any of it?
I could give you a whole philosophical response about the power of witnessed experience, but the real answer is simpler. I started sharing more because people wrote back.
I’d get messages saying things like, “I’ve been trying to describe this feeling my whole life, and you just did it in one paragraph.” Or: I thought I was the only one, and then I found your story.
I was not prepared for that, and honestly, I still get caught off guard by it. I’m not sitting down to write this newsletter thinking, “let me be someone’s guide today.” I sit down because something is moving through me, needing an outlet.
That’s really it. I’ve learned that when someone honestly shares what they’ve been carrying, it gives others permission to see that same thing in themselves.
The more specific I got about my own experience, the more universal it became.
Writing about exactly my version of a feeling, with all its particular details and contradictions, would land for someone living a completely different life.
So I kept going.
Someone reading this right now is carrying something they haven’t yet found the language for. Something that maybe is too small to take seriously or too personal to say out loud to anyone who actually knows them.
If something I write becomes the thing they needed to read, even once, then every uncomfortable moment of putting this out into the world has been worth it.
That’s the only reason I’ve ever shown up to this.
To My Family, Directly
My mom called me because my brother had called her to talk about my most recent post.
He didn’t call me.
The conversation made its usual rounds in my family, always circling behind someone’s back, never quite making it to them. By the time it reached me, whatever I’d written had already been reinterpreted. The interpretation had become the story.
I’m not bringing this up to make anyone the bad guy. I’m sharing this because this is a space where I talk about what’s actually happening. And this is what’s actually happening.
So here’s what I want my family to understand, as plainly as I can say it.
When I write here, it’s not directed at you. I’m not trying to settle old scores or play the martyr for an audience of people who don’t know you. I’m just making sense of my own experience, my own inner world, in the only way that has ever genuinely made sense to me.
Think of it this way. Some people work things out in therapy. Some call their best friend at midnight. Some run five miles until their head clears. I write, and I share because I’ve found that honesty out in the open does more for me (and maybe for someone else) than honesty kept quietly to myself.
That’s it. That’s really all this is.
I’m going to get things wrong here. That’s what it looks like when someone is genuinely growing rather than just showing you a polished version of themselves.
And I want to put this on the record. I’m going to get things wrong here. I’ll describe things from my perspective, which isn’t the only one, and I know that. I’ll hold opinions I’ll eventually grow out of. Future me will probably read some of this and wince a little. That’s okay. That’s actually the point. That’s what it looks like when someone is genuinely growing rather than just showing you a polished version of themselves.
I always mean well. I’m never here to hurt anyone I care about.
I’m just trying to figure out how to be more fully myself, out loud, because doing it quietly has never worked for me.
What Growing in Public Actually Looks Like
Most people know one version of a personal growth story: the highlight reel. Someone goes quiet for a while, does the hard work privately, and comes back transformed. Clean. Ready to share the lesson from the other side.
That’s not what this is.
I write while I’m still in it, because what the highlight reel version leaves out is that most of us are never really fully on the other side. We’re always in the middle of something, and when all we ever see is the resolved, figured-out version of how other people do it, our own unfinished state starts to feel like we’re behind somehow.
We’re not behind. That’s just being a person.
So I write from where I actually am. With what I currently know, which will always be incomplete. I say things I’ll probably revise. I hold positions I’ll eventually move past. I share realizations that might look different to me in two years. The cringe I’ll feel when I read this back someday isn’t a failure. It means I kept moving.
For a long time, I shrank myself before I even started writing. I made myself smaller so others wouldn’t have to change. After years of that, I became someone easy to be around. Honestly, I was just exhausted.
I can’t do that anymore. And this is me writing about what it feels like to stop.
Why I’ll Keep Showing Up
Every two weeks, I write a new post from wherever I am in the world.
That’s the commitment I made to myself, and I’m not taking it back. Not because I have everything figured out (I don’t), but because showing up consistently, in whatever state I’m actually in, is the whole practice itself. And I’ve really come to believe that consistency in uncertainty is its own kind of courage.
The messages I get from people who read these posts almost always say the same thing. I described something that made them feel less alone.
I bring this up because I think most of us are moving through our days with more inside us than we’ve ever been given permission to say, and sometimes, when someone shares their own experience, something small opens inside.
That’s all I’m offering here. A small opening.
The Rebirth Files is a record of a real person, mid-transition, writing her way through it. Because some part of her has always believed that honesty goes further when you say it out loud.
If you’ve stuck around, thank you for being here. If you’re new, welcome. And if you’re someone from my life who’s still wondering why I do this, I hope this helps answer that. You never had to piece it together secondhand. You could have just asked.
The door’s always been open.
Until next time,
🖤 Joni @ The Rebirth Files
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