When the Mirror Speaks

There’s something almost absurd about it, isn’t there?

We live day after day inside a mind that can be—let’s just say it—cruel. We accept the beatings it offers us like they're truth wrapped in logic. We let it speak to us in ways we would never tolerate from another human being.

You’ll never be enough.

You should’ve known better.

You always mess it up.

Who do you think you are?

We let these phrases become wallpaper in our minds. So constant we forget they’re there. So familiar we confuse them with our personality. They become the unseen architecture of how we move through life—how we love, how we hide, how we hold ourselves back.

And then… someone outside of us says something.

Maybe not even that harsh. A subtle criticism. A misunderstood comment. A casual observation.

And suddenly—boom. The earth inside us quakes.

We bristle.

We shut down.

We launch into defence or spiral into shame.

We can’t stop thinking about it.

But why?

Why does something they say—something softer than what we already whisper in our own minds—hurt so deeply?

Here’s the tender truth I’ve come to see:

It’s not the sharpness of their words.

It’s the echo.

It’s that what they said landed.

Because we’ve already said it to ourselves a thousand times.

And when their words match our own inner torment, suddenly it feels real—as if their voice confirms what we secretly fear is true.

That’s what breaks us.

The thing we hoped no one else could see just got named. Not by us. By someone else. Out loud. Now it's not just a private torment—it has become public. And in that moment, we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Because if it’s true out there, maybe it was always true in here.

But love…

What if it’s not truth being confirmed—but a lie finally being revealed?

What if that shattering feeling is not your soul breaking—but your spell breaking?

You see, the mind is clever. It creates entire mazes of self-judgment and fear and calls it reality. It loops us in old narratives, ancestral echoes, societal imprints. It builds these walls, not to punish us, but to protect us. But over time, those walls become prisons.

And then someone speaks.

And that voice—no matter how unintentional—finds a crack.

And the light gets in.

That’s the moment of invitation.

The invitation isn’t to hate the person who spoke.

The invitation isn’t even to argue with them.

The invitation is to turn inward and listen.

To trace the pain.

To find the root.

To ask, softly:

When did I first start saying this to myself? Who did I learn this from? What age was I when this became true in my world? And is it still true now?

This is the quiet revolution.

To stop defending and start decoding.

To stop blaming and start liberating.

Because we will never be free if we’re only free when people treat us kindly.

We will never be free if we need the world to reflect only what we want to see.

We become free when we know who we are, even when the mirror is distorted.

We become free when someone says something that used to hurt—and we feel the old sting rise up—and instead of reacting, we choose to tend to the wound that caused the sting in the first place.

We become free when we speak to ourselves with such devotion and clarity that no one else’s opinion can override our own knowing.

That’s sovereignty.

That’s the created life.

That’s the quiet alchemy of healing.

And let’s be honest—this isn’t easy work.

It’s easier to stay angry.

It’s easier to avoid mirrors altogether.

But then we become prisoners of our reactions.

We mistake our triggers for truth, instead of seeing them as torches illuminating the places still aching to be met with love.

So the next time someone says something and it hits hard—pause.

Ask yourself:

Is this about them?

Or is this about me, and the story I’ve been carrying, and the part of me that is finally ready to come home?

You are not broken.

You are not what anyone else says.

And you are not even what the voice in your head says—especially if that voice was built in the image of someone else’s pain.

You are the one who gets to choose.

To decide which mirrors to trust.

To turn inward with compassion.

To re-author the stories.

To soften the voice.

To name yourself whole.

So when the mirror speaks… listen.

Not for confirmation.

But for liberation.

You’re ready.