We lived in a white house with a gravel drive on Gladstone Avenue in Columbus, Indiana, until I was in the fourth grade. Sisters Missy and Shelly lived with their mom on one side of us, and I thought they were rich or lucky because they had a basement, a sandbox, and cable TV. On the other side of our house lived red-headed Michelle, who never outgrew her baby teeth and always smelled like ketchup. A couple doors down from her was a tiny house set back from the street where Mr. Hunt lived.

He was a skeleton of a man, eyes shadowed by protruding eyebrows, all angles, no curves, a praying mantis with no faith at all. Through elementary school, our bus stop was at the end of his driveway, delivering a low-grade anxiety into the pit of my stomach every school morning. I vaguely remember his front windows, covered with orange-and-black No Trespassing signs, makeshift glasses on a haunted house that never stopped watching us. I can’t say for sure, but standing on his driveway definitely felt like a violation of those threatening signs.

My shoulders stayed tense until bus 25 came around the corner to pick us up for school; it was always a relief to step off the forbidden property and into the warm, loud interior of our school bus. From the safety of my green pleather bus seat, I found the courage to glance back at the house. It was hard enough standing at the edge of his driveway. I can’t even imagine walking up to his door.

And yet, in many ways, I’ve had a lot of experience in walking up to the door of a house where I feel unwanted and unwelcome, because for years this is what I did to myself. I stood at the edge of the driveway of my own soul, unaware of the life that wanted to be lived on the other side of the door.

Coming home to yourself is not always an easy thing to do. But it’s vital because, though parenting is all-consuming, especially when the kids are small, the only person you’re guaranteed to be with every day of your life is you. So maybe it’s time to make some peace.

If I arrive at a house and the hostess stands on the porch shouting criticisms, judgments, and sarcasms at me, guess what I won’t want to do? Walk through the door. I’ll turn my back on that house every time and vow never to return.

What if we stopped standing on our own front porch and bullying ourselves? What if we decided, instead, to be a gracious hostess to ourselves at the threshold of our own soul?

When life becomes unpredictable and unsure, it’s easy to scatter apart in panic, to come undone, to be spread too thin, and to suffer beneath the weight of decision fatigue. It’s easy to forget who we are. That’s when we need home more than ever. But we don’t go home when home is unsafe.

Maybe your next right thing today is to recognize all the ways you’ve become your own enemy, all the ways you’ve put No Trespassing signs on your own soul windows, all the ways you’ve become your own suspicious, furrow-browed neighbor.

Instead, remember a time when you felt most like yourself. What were you doing? Who were you with? And maybe it’s also important to consider who you were not with. These questions can help us begin to get familiar with our own giftedness, personality, and offerings we can uniquely give.

Coming home to yourself will be different for all of us. I can’t say specifically what this might look like for you, but I can say when you’re close, you’ll know it. It will sound soft and gentle. It will feel safe and settled. You won’t feel like you have something to prove. It will be kind and open and free. It may be something you’ll feel invited to grow into, that will require a bit of a journey, but it’s a journey you’ll be glad to take. Then one day you may be surprised to see yourself again. As my friend Fil Anderson says, “It’s a wild and wonderful thing to bump into someone and realize it’s you.”

Emily P. Freeman is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author and host of the popular podcast The Next Right Thing. Her new book, The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions, is available now.