“You will love again the stranger who was your self.”
— Derek Walcott, Love After Love
Many of us have spent years relating to ourselves as a project. Something to improve. Something to manage. Something to defend. Self-will keeps us busy adjusting the image—trying to become someone more secure, more acceptable, more in control.
But beneath all of that effort is a quieter presence. Not the version shaped by fear or performance, but the one who has been here all along. When the grip of self-protection softens, even briefly, we may catch a glimpse of that stranger—the self who does not need to prove, persuade, or perfect. Meeting that presence can feel unfamiliar at first. There may be grief for the years spent at a distance.
Loving the stranger who was our self is not self-improvement. It is recognition. It is the gentle shift from management to welcome. And from that welcome, something steadier begins to live through us.
Egos Anonymous is offered in an experimental spirit—an invitation to see whether there’s interest in a shared way of working with ego, self-will, and control. The language, structure, and practices are still forming and are meant to grow through lived experience.
This is a soft launch. The hope is to eventually gather a year of reflections into a book, but for now they’re simply being shared—one day at a time—to see what resonates.
If something feels useful, confusing, incomplete, or off, feedback is welcome and genuinely appreciated. This work is meant to be shaped together.
