Awaken the Eagle: How to Embody Your True Potential
There’s a fable I return to often, especially in moments when someone in therapy touches something essential and nearly forgotten in themselves. It’s the story of the eagle raised among chickens—a creature of the sky convinced it belonged to the ground.
In this tale, an eagle is found as a chick and placed in a chicken coop. Over time, it learns to peck and cluck, never knowing it was born to soar. Until one day, someone sees the eagle for what it is and dares it to fly. At first it refuses, too identified with its smallness. But finally, when held high enough to glimpse the rising sun, the eagle remembers. It spreads its wings and lifts into the sky.
This story speaks to the quiet tragedy—and radical potential—of the human psyche.
Raised to Forget, Born to Remember
So many of us grow up in "chicken yards" of imposed identity:
Social expectations
Inherited trauma
Racialized or gendered projections
Assimilation pressures
Internalized beliefs that keep us small
We forget who we are. Or we never get the chance to find out. Our psyche adapts, and in doing so, parts of the soul go dormant.
When the Psyche Begins to Stir
In deep therapeutic work, there are moments when something ancient stirs within. We meet a dream, a memory, an emotion, or a truth that doesn't fit into the roles we’ve been given.
These moments—though sometimes disorienting—are sacred.
They are not breakdowns; they are breakthroughs.
Something inside us begins to remember its wings.
Decolonizing the Psyche
To decolonize the psyche means to ask:
Who taught me I was a chicken?
What identities, beliefs, or roles have I inherited that were never mine?
Where have I silenced ancestral or spiritual truths to belong?
This work is about more than healing—it’s about remembering. Reclaiming what was lost or silenced. Honoring indigenous, embodied, and ancestral wisdom. Trusting what we know in our bones but were taught to question.
Insight Alone Isn’t Enough
But remembrance alone is not enough.
The eagle must choose to fly.
True revelation doesn’t just live in insight—it lives in embodiment:
Showing up differently
Loving more fiercely
Creating with authenticity
Setting boundaries
Grieving deeply
Trusting that our wholeness is not too much
The work is slow, layered, deeply personal—but also collective.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
— Carl Gustav Jung
When One of Us Flies, the Sky Widens for All
This is the sacred invitation of therapy and of life:
To awaken the eagle within.
To leave the chicken yard behind.
To become who we were always meant to be.
🌀 Journaling Prompt
Think of a time in your life when you forgot who you were—or molded yourself to fit into a space that didn’t see your wholeness.
What were the messages that shaped that version of you?
What might it feel like to stretch your wings again—gently, in your own way?
Who or what reminds you of your true nature?
