Very few times in your life do you meet someone with the courage to speak about their inner world. To say out loud what they think they deserve. What their happiness actually looks like.
I was privileged enough to speak to someone pretty cool this week.
We are on different journeys — obviously — but carrying the same weight on our shoulders. The same pressure from society to have it somewhat figured out. To have it somewhat set in stone. To have some established form of livelihood. And not necessarily for ourselves — but for the emotional security of the people who love us. So that family can have a sense of peace in knowing that we have created something meaningful, something stable. Something that maybe looks like a version of a white picket fence. A version of perfection that gives the people around you comfort — comfort in knowing that your life will amount to something the longer you compound your efforts at your 9 to 5.
The pressure is not really about the life you are building. It is about the life other people need to see you building — so that they can rest.
But what made her cool — really cool — was her ability to question what she wanted.
Very few times in your life do you meet someone with the courage to think about their inner world, let alone speak about it. To sit across from someone and hear them say out loud what they think they deserve. What their happiness actually looks like. What they are willing to risk to find it. That is rare. Rarer than most people realize, because most of us have spent so long making our needs invisible that we have forgotten we are allowed to have them at all.
The kind that does not come from having everything figured out — but from having made peace, somehow, with the not knowing. The kind that only exists in a woman who has looked at the uncertainty of her own life and decided, quietly and on her own terms, that it does not have to be resolved to be beautiful.
Sometimes trying to find the words for what you are feeling — trying to translate the interior of your life into language that makes everyone around you not think you have lost your mind entirely — can be challenging. Hard. Isolating in a way that is difficult to explain to people who have never felt it. But that is a part of figuring life out. Of leaning into who you are, what you are, and what you actually want from the one life you have been given.
Luckily for me, I was able to bounce my ideas off of her. Very rarely do you meet someone with the same zest and curiosity for a life that has more to offer — more opportunities to try and fail and try and fail and then, at some point, try and succeed. Most people have already talked themselves out of the trying by the time you meet them. She had not. And that, more than anything, was what made her worth knowing.
I do not know where her journey goes from here. I do not know what she will choose, or when, or how much it will cost her before it starts to give back. But I hope she finds the courage to live her life as freely as she deserves. I hope she believes in herself as much as possible — even on the days when belief feels like the most expensive thing in the world.
Because in the end, that is what life is all about. Taking the risk that seems as though it costs the most. Creating something beautiful and lasting all while starting with just a little courage here and a whole lot of audacity there.
That is the whole thing. That is all of it.
Written for every woman still in the trying — and for the one who reminded me this week that questioning what you want is not weakness. It is the beginning of everything.