Man in the Mirror: What Happens When You Finally Look at Yourself

You've been fixing everything around you. But when did you last really look at yourself?

Rho uses the release of the Michael Jackson biopic and the message of "Man in the Mirror" to break down why real change starts inside — not with a grand gesture, not with a perfect plan, and definitely not with waiting for someone else to finally get it together.

This one is for the woman who has been so strong for so long that she forgot to check in with herself.

WHAT WE COVER:

• Why we reflect on everyone except ourselves
• You can't change what you won't acknowledge
• The mirror doesn't shame you — it shows you who survived
• Real change starts with one honest decision

JOURNAL PROMPT: "What have I been avoiding seeing in myself — and what do I think will happen if I finally look?"

PUT IT DOWN PRACTICE: Five minutes. Real mirror. Say it out loud: "I see you. I'm not running from you anymore."

Subscribe. Turn on notifications. Send this to one woman who needs it. Follow me on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Sign up for my newsletter for a monthly does of you. 

Until next time — be gentle with yourself. Put down what's heavy. Stay aligned. Stay unbothered.

And hold your own damn purse.

Email address: rho@hold-my-purse.com

Website: https://www.hold-my-purse.com/

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Transcript

Have you ever been so focused on fixing everything around you?

The relationships. The household. The job. The kids. The friendships.

That you forgot to look at yourself?

I mean, really look at yourself.

Not the “I need to lose weight” look.
Not the “I need to do better” guilt spiral.

I mean actually standing in front of yourself and asking:

Who is this woman?
And what does she need?

That is where we’re starting today.

Hey, self-care warriors. Welcome back to Hold My Purse, the space where we put down what was never ours to carry and come back home to ourselves.

I’m Rho, and I am so glad you’re here. I feel so grateful that you’ve taken the time to tune in.

If you’re new, pull up a seat, because we don’t fake peace around here. We don’t do toxic positivity. We do real conversations, honest reflection, and we give each other permission to exhale.

So exhale right now.

Seriously.

Take a breath.

Let’s get into it.

The Michael Jackson biopic has been in theaters for over a month now, and people have been in their feelings ever since. I believe his downloads are up too, and honestly, as a Michael Jackson fan, it has been wonderful to see the resurgence of love and appreciation for his craft.

Now, I’ll be real with you. The movie covers Michael’s early life, his rise, the Jackson family dynamic, the pressure, and the brilliance. It doesn’t go all the way through his full catalog, but that’s not actually what I want to talk about today.

What I want to talk about is Michael Jackson the man. The icon. The person who carried an enormous amount of weight.

The weight of fame.
Family pressure.
Not being allowed to just be a kid.

Could you imagine not being able to go outside and play? Could you imagine dealing with beatings, pressure, expectations, and still somehow creating music that asked people to do better?

Two songs in particular have always stayed with me from his catalog: “Man in the Mirror” and “Heal the World.”

And here’s what hit me when I was thinking about this episode.

Both of those songs start in the same place.

They start with you.

They start with the internal work before the external change.

“Man in the Mirror” literally reminds us that if you want to make a difference, you have to start with the person looking back at you.

And I thought to myself…

That’s the episode.

That’s the conversation.

Because how many of us are trying to heal everything around us without ever stopping to look at ourselves?

So today, we’re talking about what happens when you finally stop running from your own reflection.

When you look at yourself, not to criticize, not to fix, but to really see who’s standing there.

And here’s your journal prompt for this episode, because I believe when you journal as you listen, it allows the conversation to sink in a little deeper.

So grab your journal if you have it, and write this down:

What have I been avoiding seeing in myself? And what do I think will happen if I finally look?

Don’t rush the answer.

Just let it live with you as we move through this conversation.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Here’s something I’ve noticed, and maybe you’ve noticed it too.

We are excellent at self-reflection when it comes to other people.

We’ll sit with our girlfriends and break down somebody else’s patterns with precision.

We’ll say:

“Girl, she keeps choosing the same type of man.”
“She needs therapy.”
“She’s people-pleasing because of her childhood.”

We can see it so clearly when it’s somebody else.

But the moment it’s us?

Suddenly, we’re too busy.

But the mirror doesn’t go away just because you stop looking at it.

It’s still there.

And everything you’ve been avoiding is still showing up.

It’s showing up in your relationships.
In your patterns.
In the way you overextend and then retreat.
In the way you say yes when your whole body is screaming no.
In the way you keep waiting for someone else to change before your life gets better.
In the way you keep waiting for situations to change before you finally choose yourself.

Michael released “Man in the Mirror” around 1988. He was at the absolute peak of fame. He had everything the world says you’re supposed to want.

And what did he sing about?

Looking inward.

Real change starting inside the man.

When I tell you that man was onto something…

Now, let’s talk about the first truth today:

You cannot change what you refuse to look at.

I know that sounds simple, right?

But stay with me.

Because a lot of us are walking around in patterns we already know aren’t working.

We know we keep overgiving.
We know we dim ourselves in certain relationships and situations.
We know we’ve been putting our dreams on the back burner for years.

We know this.

But knowing and looking are two very different things.

Knowing is having a vague awareness that something isn’t right.

Looking is when you stop, sit down, get honest, and ask yourself:

How did I get here?
What part did I play in this?
What belief have I been living from that kept me in this cycle?

That mirror moment is uncomfortable.

I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

But on the other side of that discomfort is clarity.

Real clarity.

Not the kind you get from journaling one time and calling it done.

The kind that starts to shift how you show up.

The kind that says:

“You know what? I see the pattern. I understand where it came from. And I’m ready to choose something different.”

You cannot get there if you won’t look.

Now, I want to share a personal story with you.

For years after I got divorced, I had this mentality of, “You know what? I’m here for a good time. I’m just going to date.”

And when I say I was just dating, I mean I wasn’t really taking anybody seriously.

I had this mindset like, “I’m going to have me a bench of men, and I’m just going to call on that bench whenever I feel like it.”

But when my mom passed away, I realized I didn’t really have anyone there to support me in the way I needed.

And that made me think, “Okay, maybe it’s time to date more seriously.”

But then I noticed something.

I was choosing emotionally unavailable men.

Men who weren’t really present.
Men who needed fixing.
Men who couldn’t show up for me in the way I actually needed.

And I had to stop and say, “Wait. Time out.”

Taylor Swift has a song called “Anti-Hero,” and there’s a line that says, “It’s me, I’m the problem.”

And I realized…

I was the problem.

Not in a shameful way. Not in a “beat myself up” kind of way.

But in a “I need to take responsibility for what I’m allowing into my space” kind of way.

I had to take a hard look at myself and the type of men I kept inviting into my life.

So I took about a year and a half off from dating.

I got a yoni cleanse because I have a friend who always says that when you are intimate with someone, you exchange energy. And when you’re exchanging energy, that can include their heavy energy too.

So I took a step back.

And I’m not going to lie…

It was rough.

Because a sister likes to, you know, get jiggy.

But I told myself, “You really need to do this.”

So I didn’t date. I did the work on myself. I started asking myself what my non-negotiables were in a relationship.

I asked myself:

What do I actually need from a man?
What have I been prioritizing that doesn’t really matter?
What have I been ignoring that absolutely does matter?

I realized I had been focused on things like a certain look, a certain ethnicity, certain surface-level boxes.

But I wasn’t paying enough attention to the character checks I actually needed.

So I took a step back.

And eventually, I found somebody who does it for me.

Now let me pause right here and do what I call a purse check.

What are you carrying right now that you’ve been calling a “situation,” but deep down, you know good and well it’s a pattern?

Is it the relationship where you keep making yourself smaller?

Is it the job you’ve been “about to leave” for three years?

Come on now.

You know it’s true.

Is it the friendship where you’re always giving, but never really receiving?

Is it the way you talk to yourself when you think nobody’s listening?

Because that right there?

That’s the mirror.

Don’t move past that question too fast.

Take a moment and think about it.

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Now here’s the second truth:

A lot of us avoid the mirror because we’re afraid of what we’re going to see.

Come on now.

Don’t fight me.

You know it’s true.

We’re afraid that if we really look, we’ll find out we’re the problem.

We’re afraid we’ll find out we’re broken.
That we should have done better.
That we wasted years.
That the people who said we were too much or not enough were right.

And that’s a hard truth.

That’s a hard pill to swallow.

But here’s what I need you to hear:

That is not what the mirror shows you when you look with compassion instead of judgment.

When you approach the mirror with honesty and grace, it shows you a person who did the best she could with what she knew.

It shows you a woman who survived.

A woman who gave a lot.

And honestly?

Maybe too much.

A woman who learned to be strong because she had to.

Because that’s what women do.

But it also shows you a woman who is ready for something different.

And that, my love, is not failure.

That’s evolution.

Healing is not about shaming the woman you were.

It’s about making room for the woman you’re becoming.

We are not judging the old version of you.

She survived.

She kept you here.

But now, we’re making room for the next version.

And hear me when I say this:

The next version of you knows herself.
She trusts herself.
She does not need everyone’s approval to move forward.
She is not available for relationships or roles that require her to disappear.

But you do not meet her by running from the mirror.

You meet her by standing in front of it.

Here’s the third truth, and this is where Michael’s music gets really personal to me.

“Heal the World” is about making a better place for you, for me, and the entire human race.

But the healing is not just global.

It’s intimate.

It starts with one person choosing differently.

One person deciding that the world inside of them is going to be different.

Because real change does not always start with some grand gesture.

It does not start with a vision board.

It does not start with a new year.

It does not start with waiting until everything lines up.

If you wait for everything to line up, you’re going to be waiting for a long time.

Real change starts with one honest moment.

One honest decision.

The decision to stop lying to yourself about what you actually need.

The decision to stop waiting for someone else to change so you can finally be okay.

The decision to look in the mirror, not with criticism, not with shame, but with the kind of love you would give to your best friend.

That’s it.

That’s where it starts.

One honest decision.
One small turn toward yourself.
And then another.
And then another.

That’s how the woman on the other side of survival mode gets built.

Not overnight.
Not perfectly.
But honestly.

So here’s your Put It Down Practice for this week.

And I want you to take this seriously.

Find five minutes.

Just five.

Set a timer if you want to.

Stand in front of the mirror.

Not to fix your hair.
Not to check how you look.
Just to look at yourself.

And while you’re standing there, say this out loud:

I see you.
I’m not running from you anymore.
I’m ready to know who you actually are.

That’s it.

That’s the practice.

It may feel a little weird, but that’s okay.

Do it anyway.

And if you journal, write down whatever comes up afterward.

Don’t edit it.
Don’t make it pretty.
Just write down the truth.

Up next, Arya speaks.

I took her to see the Michael Jackson movie, and she had something to say.

Arya:
Welcome back to Hold My Purse. Today, we’re going to talk about the Michael Jackson movie I watched.

The Michael Jackson movie was about two hours and seven minutes, and I loved it. But the only part I didn’t like was when Michael Jackson got whipped so many times.

And also when his hair caught on fire and he had to get surgery. He had to wear a wig, and then he went back on stage.

At the end, I fell asleep, but go see the movie. The movie was very good.

Rho:
After seeing the movie, Arya said to me, “Do you know what I’m going to be for Halloween?”

I said, “What?”

She said, “I’m going to dress up like Michael Jackson when he performed ‘Billie Jean.’”

And I said, “Okay, I like that. That’s kind of clever.”

Thank you for spending this time with me today.

You know, I am on a mission. I am determined to build a tribe of self-care warriors because I believe, deep in my heart, that the minute you start putting yourself first and showing yourself real self-care and self-love, your whole life can do a 180.

Before you go, let’s recap what we talked about today because I want this to stick.

I want you to walk away with action items and the ability to go deeper within yourself.

Key takeaway number one: You cannot change what you refuse to look at.

Knowing something is broken and actually facing it are two very different things.

The mirror is waiting, and it is not going anywhere.

So show up for yourself and look.

Key takeaway number two: The mirror does not shame you.

When you approach your own reflection with honesty and grace, not judgment, you find a woman who survived.

A woman who gave a lot.
A woman who showed up.
A woman who is absolutely ready for something different.

Key takeaway number three: Real change starts with one honest decision.

Not some grand gesture.
Not a perfect plan.
Just one turn toward yourself.

And then another.

And that is how she gets built — the version of you who is done living in survival mode.

And remember your Put It Down Practice for the week:

Spend five minutes in front of the mirror.

Look at yourself and say out loud:

I see you.
I’m not running from you anymore.

Then write down whatever comes up.

Don’t clean it up.

Just write the truth.

Now, if this episode met you somewhere real today, I need you to do two things.

First, subscribe to Hold My Purse and turn on your notifications. I don’t want you missing a single conversation.

Second, send this episode to a woman who has been so focused on fixing everything around her that she forgot to look at herself.

You know who she is.

She needs this.

Be a friend and send it.

And screenshot this episode. Tag me on Instagram at @HoldMyPurseWithRho and tell me:

What is one thing you are finally willing to see in yourself?

Drop it in the comments, and let’s hold this mirror together.

Michael Jackson was gifted, complicated, and layered. He left us songs that still ask us to do the real work — the inside work, the mirror work.

And that is the work we’re doing here every other week.

And I’m not going to lie. Sometimes life gets in the way, and I fall off the wagon. So if you turn on those notifications, you’ll definitely know when there’s a new episode.

But I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “Rhonda, you’re on some nonsense. You need to deliver these episodes every two weeks.”

So I’m making that commitment.

And I’m chuckling because sometimes I really do be on the struggle bus, but I am committed to showing up.

Before you go, I want to leave you with this affirmation.

Say it with me out loud if you can:

I am not afraid of what I will find when I look at myself.
I approach my own reflection with honesty and grace.
I am allowed to see myself clearly and still love what I see.
The change I have been waiting for starts with me, and I am ready.

Until next time, my fabulous friends, my self-care warriors…

Be gentle with yourself.
Put down what’s heavy.
Stay aligned.
Stay unbothered.
And hold your own damn peace.