Thanking the Woman I Used to Be
Finding the courage to champion yourself: a journey of grace, authenticity, and becoming.
It is human nature, I think, to see the beauty in everyone else before we recognize it in ourselves.
We can look at the people we love, the people we lead, the people we admire, and so easily tell them where they are growing, where they are strong, where they are doing a beautiful job. We can champion them. Encourage them. Remind them of their worth when they forget. So why does becoming our own best champion, our own safest place, our own loudest cheerleader feel so difficult? So foreign?
The quiet, sacred kind of courage
For me, learning to give myself grace has required courage. Not the loud kind. Not the kind that announces itself before entering the room. But the quiet, sacred kind of courage that asks you to take a long look in the mirror and be honest about what no longer serves you. The courage to release old versions of yourself without shame. The courage to thank the woman you once were for surviving, protecting, pleasing, holding it all together, and carrying you this far. The courage to admit that while those versions of you served important roles and functions, they are no longer needed in the same way as you step into your own power.
The past few years have been some of the most humbling and rewarding of my life. Not because they have been easy. Because they have been true. Older versions of me would have been embarrassed for not connecting the little synchronicities along the way. Embarrassed to be having these "aha" moments at this stage of life. Embarrassed that reinvention was still asking something of me. But I am no longer serving that version of myself.
I have had to look at the places where I shrank to make others comfortable. The moments where I softened my voice, silenced my intuition, overextended my heart, and confused being needed with being valued. I have had to learn that people-pleasing is not the same as love. That over-functioning is not the same as strength. That keeping the peace at the expense of my own truth is not peace at all. Owning my authenticity at this level once felt foreign to me. Now, it feels like coming home.
But this was not an instantaneous transformation. It was not one bold decision followed by a completely new life. It was change built slowly over time. Layer by layer.
- It was built in the quiet decisions where I chose not to abandon myself.
- It was built in the conversations where I finally told the truth.
- It was built in the boundaries I set with a shaking voice.
- It was built in the moments I stopped asking, "Will they still like me if I change?" and started asking, "Will I still recognize myself if I don't?"
Reinventing myself in my 40s
Reinventing myself in my 40s was not on the roadmap of success I created in my late 20s and early 30s. Back then, I thought success would look more linear. More polished. More predictable. But life has a way of handing us chapters we never planned for and asking us to become the kind of person who can live them fully.
So here I am. Giving myself grace for how life has unfolded. Stepping out on my own. Learning to co-parent, learning to trust again, learning to love and to love myself through heartbreak, and learning to become the best version of myself.
Giving myself grace
Life has not been perfect, but it has perfectly refined me. There is something powerful about realizing you do not have to dislike who you were to become who you are. Every version of me mattered. Every version of me carried something and every version of me got me here. And now, I get to choose differently. I get to speak more honestly, love more freely, lead more boldly, and rest more fully. And in doing so, I am becoming more deeply aligned with the woman I was always meant to be.
What I have learned through this beautiful mess of discovery is that giving myself grace does not mean lowering my standards. It means honoring my humanity. It means setting boundaries and not feeling guilty. It means allowing myself to be both strong and still healing. Both grateful and still growing. Both proud of how far I have come and honest about what I am still becoming.
And maybe the real courage comes not just in rising from the fire, but in loving the woman who had to walk through it. I know now that I have the courage and ability to burn it all to the ground again if I must.
Because I have already been the phoenix rising. And this time, I am not asking for permission to become her.
