The Secret I’ve Held Onto for 25 Years

and how I’m done living a lie

Mar 05, 2025

Today, I looked in the mirror and saw myself as truly beautiful for the first time in maybe… forever.

I don’t mean liking the way my hair looked, nicely shaped eyebrows, or getting my mascara just right (which I can’t even remember wearing).

I saw myself as truly beautiful inside and out.

Exactly the way I am.

Unconditional.

Radical self-love.

The last two months/lifetime I have been working my ass off trying to love myself. Typing this feels incredibly self-indulgent, but I reached a point where it was the only way to go on. It was seeping into every part of my life- like a dark, smoky monster.

I quit drinking.

I’ve been meditating and journaling almost every day.

My stack of self-love/self-help books is almost reaching the ceiling on my bedside table at this point.

But a conversation with some of my dearest girlfriends last night completely opened me up to see the beauty I have been denying myself for so fucking long. And gosh darn, it is brutiful. It is heartbreaking that I have gone so long without accepting who I am. But now that I have finally said it out loud to the people I love the most, I feel liberated…

I am bisexual.

I have known this since I was a little girl. But around the age of 8, I d

ecided it was not an option. I would only like boys, just as everyone I knew around me had. I learned from a young age that sex was between a man and a woman. I learned to hate this part of myself. To push it down deep inside me and let it fester like a virus within. Causing a lifetime of chronic pain: anxiety, back pain, GI issues. I know now how much this secret has completely destroyed my mind, body, and soul.

As a yoga teacher, I preach self-love. I want this for everyone around me more than anything. I want to help heal others, but for so long, I was unwilling to truly face myself and love me exactly as I am.

So here I am. I am a bisexual woman married to a man with two children. I love my husband, he is my person. I love my children more than anything in the world. I love my life. And now, I love myself. Accepting and owning that I’m bisexual doesn’t necessary change anything. Yet it changes everything. It means that I am accepting all of me. Not just the parts that feel neat and clean and tidy.

We feel the need to put ourselves into boxes, and I am learning that sometimes with sexuality, that’s just not possible. But our sexuality is one of the biggest parts of ourselves, it can’t be denied or stifled. And if you try, it will find a way out.

God, I wish someone had told me when I was 8 years old that it’s okay to like women, it’s okay to like men, it’s okay to like both. It’s okay to like PEOPLE no matter what they identify as.

I don’t want to hide anymore. I want to embrace myself exactly as I am. And I can already feel that the love that has been locked inside me for so long is ready to radiate into the world.

I love you all so gosh darn much it hurts.

Find a way to accept every part of yourself, and it will set you free.

Xo,
Kelley