I've Turned My Life Into Content and Lost Myself

From the Embers & Ashes advice column: Wisdom for the Quietly Disillusioned

What remains of you when your inner life becomes content? Where is the line between sharing wisdom and commodifying your deepest experiences? What happens when the brand overtakes the human behind it?

Dear Chandra,

I've spent the last five years building my personal brand as a wellness influencer. On the surface, I'm living the dream – lucrative brand partnerships, a book deal in the works, 300K followers who seem to hang on my every word about mindfulness and authenticity.

But behind the scenes, there's nothing mindful about the way I obsessively check engagement metrics. Nothing authentic about the carefully curated version of myself I present. I stage "candid" moments of serenity while my heart races with anxiety about whether the post will perform well. I assure you, the irony of this is not lost on me.

I started this brand because I genuinely wanted to help people find peace in a chaotic world. Now I feel like I'm contributing to the noise, and my own peace is non-existent. I'm terrified of becoming irrelevant, and equally terrified that I've lost myself completely in this persona I've created.

My audience expects positivity and wisdom, but lately, all I feel is emptiness and confusion. I feel like I can't be honest because my livelihood now depends on maintaining this image. I've turned my inner life into content, and now I don't know where the brand ends and I begin.

Is there a way back to something real? Or do I need to burn it all down and start over?

— Lost in My Own Feed

Dear Lost in Your Own Feed,

Your words carry the unmistakable ache of someone who built an altar to authenticity, only to find themselves engaged in the most sophisticated performance of their life. I once did this exact thing myself – the cruel irony of it catches in the throat, doesn't it?

It's a curious and conflicting place to find yourself in, speaking of presence while your attention is fractured across metrics and engagement; preaching self-acceptance while curating a self that increasingly feels like a stranger.

Here's some truth beneath the algorithm: you haven't lost yourself, you've just buried her under layers of marketable wisdom and filtered light.

She's still there – the woman who genuinely wanted to help others find peace. She's the one writing to me now, the one who can still recognize the hollow echo in her own carefully crafted words. She's the one brave enough to name the emptiness where purpose used to live.

I want you to know this isn't unique to you. The commodification of inner life affects everyone who turns wisdom into content, healing into products, awakening into aesthetic. It's a particular wound of our time – this pressure to package and perform even our most personal transformations.

So, do you burn it all down? Not necessarily. Fire is only one way to create change. You ultimately have to trust yourself on whether fire is the order of the day, or perhaps a slower excavation is the way forward for now.

Sometimes what's needed is more like the patient work of archaeology; a careful brushing away of accumulated layers to rediscover what lies beneath, to become aware of what's run its course, and to uncover what's ready to evolve.

A possible place to start: Create a small pocket of your life that will never become content; a practice, a relationship, a creative expression that belongs only to you. No documentation, no audience, no metrics. Just the raw, unfiltered experience of being human, with all its mess and magic. Already have one of those? Create another, and another until it feels like an act of resistance.

Notice what comes up within you and how it feels to engage with life without the reflexive question of "how will this translate to my platform?" Notice how it feels in your body when you step outside the performance, even temporarily.

Then, bring that same quality of attention to your work. What parts still light you up, independent of how they're received? What wisdom do you genuinely need to hear right now? Share that – not from your persona but from your humanity.

You don't have to share everything you're thinking, feeling, or experiencing (in fact, I encourage you not to)... but can you let what you do share be 100% honest? And, can you let what you do be enough?

You might find yourself posting less frequently. You might lose some followers. Your engagement might dip for a while. Or, none of those things may happen...

But if you can get to a place where you'll be okay if they do, you'll gain something far more valuable than any metric will ever be – true freedom, and the feeling of having your hands on the wheel of your own life again.

This isn't about dramatic exits or public declarations, it's about quiet reclamation. It's about remembering that you are not a brand. You are a wild, uncategorizable human whose worth has nothing to do with your follower count or your last viral post.

Regardless of what path you end up traveling, the journey back to yourself most likely won't be perfect or photogenic. It rarely is. But allowing it to be unashamedly messy is itself part of the healing.

Despite popular belief, you are not valuable only when you're succeeding according to the very narrow values of the Machine. You are, in fact, valuable simply because you exist; you are whole, even when you're completely undone.

Your feed is not your life. Your metrics are not your worth. Your brand is not your soul.

The real you is waiting, beneath the noise, and beyond the numbers. She remembers what freedom tastes like, and she's stronger than you think.

The wild in me recognizes the wild in you,

Chandra

If you're carrying questions too heavy to hold alone or wrestling with uncomfortable truths that don't fit the narrative, send your letter to contact@chandranicole.com with "EMBERS & ASHES" in the subject line. 

Your submission may be selected for a future column. All letters will be kept anonymous, with identifying details changed to protect privacy.

For those seeking more personalized guidance on the journey of undomestication and liberation from gilded cages, private mentoring offers a deeper dive into reclaiming what's truly yours.