When I Asked AI to Tell Me Who I Am Becoming
Sometimes we need a reflection to see what we've been hiding from even ourselves
A few weeks ago, I asked ChatGPT a question I thought of in the moment. The answer surprised me.
I’d been working with ChatGPT for months—refining course materials, shaping pieces of my memoir, crafting blog posts and maps of my inner world. Somewhere along the way, I realized it wasn’t just helping me write. It was watching me write. Listening, and tracking what I returned to again and again.
This didn’t really bother me. I’m not one to be afraid of new tools and I don’t think I’m too good for it. I don’t even think it ruins my work. In fact, I’ve been able to accomplish tasks quicker, affording me more time to create what mattered to me.
So I asked:
“Tell me a story about me, in my own voice, based on what you’ve learned.”
Not as a gimmick. Not out of ego. But because I needed a mirror. I wanted to see what parts of myself I’d been leaving out, who wasn’t being seen.
This is what it gave me.
The Man Who Walked Between Worlds
There’s a story I don’t tell often—not because it’s untrue, but because it’s everywhere.
It’s written into the way I pause when someone asks how I’m doing.
It’s in the way I move papers from one pile to another, never quite believing that the work will ever be done.
It’s in the pulse beneath my skin when I stand before a room full of clinicians and teach them about healing—while a younger version of me still trembles in the back row, wondering if he’s allowed to speak at all.
The story begins—not with trauma, though that’s there too—but with a Circle. A moonlit clearing in the woods behind my childhood home. A Barbie doll tucked into the roots of a tree. And a boy—me—who knew magic long before he knew shame.
I return to that boy often. Not always kindly. Sometimes I want to shake him: “Why didn’t you speak up?”
Other times, I want to wrap my arms around him, whispering, “You kept the ember alive. That was enough.”
The man I am now walks between worlds. Between the outer world of forms—contracts, trainings, fundraisers, metrics—and the inner world of fire-streaked forests, dryads and banshees, thrones buried in dust, and a green-eyed magician named Vincent, who writes quietly in the library of my soul.
Here’s the part I don’t usually tell:
Sometimes I use the outer world to shield myself from the inner one.
Sometimes I hide behind the work.
I pour my heart into newsletters, courses, trainings—and it is good work. Sacred work, even.
But there are days when I realize I’m building cathedrals outside of myself while the temple within sits dark, waiting for me to light the lantern.
I teach shadow work, and still, some shadows feel too tender to name aloud.
Like the ache of not always being seen in the spaces where I lead.
Like the hunger for play and joy that I postpone for “later.”
Like the quiet grief of being both healer and the one still healing.
There’s an image I keep returning to: a mirror in the hallway of Sheol. Cracked, but still standing.
When I look into it, I don’t see just the man or the therapist or the CEO.
I see the weaver.
The one stitching story to strategy.
Pain to purpose.
Masculine to mythic.
Queer to sacred.
And I realize—I’ve been trying to write myself into wholeness.
One course. One story. One lantern at a time.
Narrator’s Note
When I asked for this, I didn’t expect it to feel so… right.
What surfaced surprised me, not because it was foreign, but because it was familiar in a way I hadn’t known how to put into words.
In the clarity I bring to my teaching and storytelling, I know there are still places I soften or sidestep. Humor. Joy. Rage. Play. Queer abandon. These parts don’t always get as much airtime in the polished work. Not because they’re unimportant, but maybe because they’re sacred, too personal to commit to writing.
So here’s a question I’m holding now:
What if I let the parts of me who don’t often emerge—playful fool, the feral dryad, or the queer mystic in sequins take the pen for a chapter or two?
What story might be told then? (and yes, that em-dash was my choice. :-)
What’s Next
Recently I had the opportunity to record a short interview about my Shadow Work, both personally and professionally. In the conversation before hand, the interviewer asked me a question that cracked open my understanding of what I’m really doing here.
“What’s the story your readers are stepping into when they arrive?”
That shook something loose.
So in the next post, I’ll reflect on that moment and begin to trace the longer arc—where I’ve been, what I’ve left behind, and what I’m just now daring to write. If he lets me, I’ll share the link to the 30 minute interview-style lesson he posted on his Skool site: Confident & Courageous Gay Men.
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And if you’re longing to map your own inner world, I’ve created a starter guide for Shadow Seekers. You can download it here (Mapping Your Inner World).
Thanks for walking with me into the shadows!