I Went to India Looking for My Highest Self. I Found All of Them.
What India Taught Me About Self-Discovery There is something almost embarrassing about flying to India to find yourself.It sounds like the beginning of a cliché. Yoga.Rishikesh.The Himalayas.Meditation. Surely somewhere between all that spirituality, I would meet this wiser, calmer, more evolved version of myself.But India didn’t introduce me to a new woman.It made me look at all the women I had already been.The little girl who wanted to do something meaningful with her life.The woman who stayed in places she had already outgrown.The one who searched for validation outside herself.The one who prayed.The one who drank.The one who practiced yoga.And the one who left Mexico without knowing what would happen.For years, I treated these women like contradictions. I wanted to decide which one was really me.But India made me question why I needed to choose. Maybe Becoming Isn’t About Becoming Better We talk about our “best version” as if somewhere inside us there is a perfect woman waiting to replace all the inconvenient ones.I don’t believe that anymore.Some of the versions of me I’m least proud of were trying to protect me with the only tools they had.Some stayed too long. Others escaped.At times, I desperately wanted to be loved. And sometimes, I made decisions I wouldn’t make today.But they got me here. Perhaps growth isn’t standing above your past self and saying:Look how much better I am now. Maybe it’s sitting beside her and asking:What were you trying to survive? That question changed the way I looked at myself.Eventually, it changed the way I looked at other people too.I Didn’t Find Myself in IndiaI think that’s what surprised me most.I had traveled across the world, but there wasn’t some final version of me waiting in the Himalayas.There was just me. Still curious.Still imperfect.Still becoming. And strangely, that felt more spiritual than trying to become someone else.Maybe We Don’t Have to Leave Ourselves BehindMaybe we don’t need to kill every old version of ourselves to grow.Some of them need forgiveness.Others need understanding.A few deserve to be thanked.And some simply need permission to rest.I went to India thinking transformation would feel like becoming someone new. Instead, I came home wondering if becoming is something much quieter: learning to stop abandoning the person you had to be in order to become the person you are now. Sometimes, the parts we try hardest to outgrow are the ones still asking to be understood. The pain we don’t heal doesn’t always disappear— sometimes, it simply finds new ways to follow us.