Hi friends! ✨ I am so happy that you are here to join me as I explore consciousness, the nature of Self, and some of the bigger questions about what it means to be human. It feels fitting to begin with the question that brought me here in the first place.
For most of my life, I have struggled with the simple question of who am I?
We answer this question every day, often without giving it much thought. We give our names, our jobs, our roles, our hobbies and interests. We describe our personalities, our values, the things we love and the things we believe. We collect these pieces of ourselves and weave them together into an identity, a story of who we believe ourselves to be.
But when I really sit with the question, these answers never seem like enough. They describe pieces of who I am, but something still feels unanswered. Who am I underneath it all?
The deeper I look, the more tangled the question becomes, like roots twisting beneath the surface. We are complex, often contradictory beings, shaped by our experiences, relationships, environments, and the expectations placed upon us. With so many facets of who we are, it is hard to construct a coherent sense of self. When those pieces don’t seem to fit neatly together, it is easy to feel lost within them. And without a clear sense of who we are, it is easy to feel untethered – not only from ourselves but from the lives we are trying to create.
For me, identity and belonging have always felt deeply intertwined. I have often felt like I didn’t quite know who I was or where I fit. I felt lost, searching for some sense of who I was supposed to be. I learned to shape myself around expectations, showcasing the parts that aligned with who I thought I was supposed to be while suppressing the aspects that didn’t. I wanted to be somebody, to belong. But where did I fit when the pieces of me didn’t seem to fit together?
I am a mother, learning to see the world through a child’s eyes. I am a partner who just wants to be loved. I am a student drawn to the mysteries of consciousness and psychedelics. I am a festival-goer who finds freedom dancing in a field with friends and strangers. I am a traveler, excited by new places and new adventures. I am the bar regular, playing trivia with a pitcher of Bud Light and the bookworm cozied up with a psychological thriller. I’m a planner, but I’m cluttered. I love people, but I’m shy. I’m a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a friend.
I am so many things. I hold so many different versions of myself. For much of my life, I struggled to integrate these seemingly contradictory parts into a coherent whole. How could all of these belong to the same person?
Surely, I couldn’t be the kind of caring, present mother I wanted to be while also being fascinated by psychedelic drugs and altered states of consciousness. I couldn’t feel overwhelmed by social anxiety in the grocery store and somehow feel completely at home surrounded by thousands of people at a music festival. Somewhere among all these contradictions, I thought there had to be one version that was the real me.
Psychology and sociology offer different ways of understanding how these versions of self come to exist. Our identities are shaped by our beliefs and values, our patterns of thought and behavior, our memories and experiences. They are also formed in relationship with other people and the world around us; through culture, social roles, norms, expectations, and the groups to which we belong. From these perspectives, the self is something we develop, construct, and continually reshape as we move through life. And I think there is something deeply valuable in understanding ourselves this way. These pieces tell the story of how we became who we are.
But beneath these layers of identity, I have always sensed a deeper presence – a core sense of being that feels more fundamentally me. Understanding how my identity was shaped helped me make sense of the person I had become, but I still wanted to understand the self experiencing it all.
That search has led me inward, into the depths of my own being. If I stripped away the roles, interests, traits, and stories I had used to define myself, what would be left? Am I simply the little voice inside my head? And if that voice fades into silence, what remains?
In the stillness, I find myself returning to awareness.
Beneath the constant stream of thoughts, identities, emotions, and experiences is the awareness that notices them. I can observe my thoughts without being the thoughts themselves. I can move through different roles without any one of them defining me completely. Even my understanding of myself can change while there remains something within me that is aware of that change.
I no longer need to determine which version is the “real” me. They are all real expressions of my experience, but no single one represents the whole of who I am. The mother, the student, the festival-goer, the friend – each is a part of me, a different expression of the same awareness moving through this life.
Through my own journey, I have come to understand the awareness that remains through all these changing versions of myself as my true Self – the deepest sense of who I am beyond the identities I have constructed throughout my life. For me, that Self is consciousness itself.
This is where consciousness becomes the thread that ties the pieces together. I believe consciousness extends beyond the boundaries of our individual minds – something universal, woven into the very fabric of existence and inseparable from the universe itself. Each of us experiences that consciousness through our own perspective, shaped by our lives, relationships, thoughts, bodies, and experiences. In this sense, I have come to think of my Self as the universe experiencing itself through the unique lens of my existence.
My experience is entirely my own, yet the consciousness experiencing it is connected to something far greater than me. And if consciousness is fundamental to the universe itself, then we may be far less separate than we understand ourselves to be. If we are each expressions of the same universal consciousness, then we are intrinsically interconnected – separate in our individual experiences yet connected by something deeper that exists within us all.
To me, there is something incredibly powerful in that possibility. Beneath everything that makes us different, is a fundamental connection that we share. And I believe that connection speaks not only to what we share, but to what we carry within us. If our consciousness is part of something as vast and limitless as the universe itself, I believe we carry some of that potential within us, too. We may hold depths of possibility that extend far beyond the identities and limitations we have learned to place around who we are.
For me, this perspective has changed the way I understand myself. Beyond that, it has changed the way I understand my place in the world. There is freedom in knowing I don’t have to fit myself into one definition of who I am. I can change, contradict myself, outgrow old versions of who I have been, and discover new ones without losing the deeper sense of Self beneath them.
The pieces of me no longer have to fit perfectly together. I can be a mother and a researcher, spiritual and scientific, shy yet deeply drawn to connection. I can dance in a field one weekend and spend the next curled up with a book. None of these versions makes the others less real.
Looking back, I think this is what I was searching for all along. I spent so much time trying to become somebody because I thought having a clear identity would finally give me a sense of belonging. But I no longer think belonging depends on finding the one place where all of me seems to fit. I can belong within the fullness of who I am while also knowing that I am part of something much greater than myself. Through consciousness, I have found a sense of connection – to myself, to others, and to the universe – that makes me feel a little less untethered in this life.
And that is where Threads of Consciousness begins.
I created this space because I want somewhere to keep asking these questions. Somewhere I can explore consciousness through psychology and science without losing the spirituality, curiosity, and lived experience that make these questions meaningful to me in the first place.
There is so much I still want to understand. Altered states and psychedelics, music and festivals, awe and connection, healing and transformation – these are some of the threads that continue to draw me deeper into questions of consciousness. I want to explore the experiences that shift our perspective, challenge our understanding of reality, or connect us to something beyond ourselves, and what they might reveal about who we are and the potential we hold within us.
Threads of Consciousness is a place for all of those questions to coexist. A place to explore what we know, what we believe, what we experience, and everything we still don’t understand. More than anything, I hope it gives you a space to ask your own questions, look a little deeper, and consider what consciousness means to you.
A Thread to Follow…
Before you go, I’ll leave you with a question to sit with:
Who am I beyond my interests, roles, and labels? If I stripped away everything I’ve used to define myself, what remains?
You don’t have to find an answer. Just give yourself the space to sit with the question and notice what comes up. And if you feel called to share, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Until next time ✨
Threads of Consciousness 
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