Becoming Her
There is a version of me that exists somewhere—maybe in another lifetime, maybe in a dream, maybe just in the quiet corners of my mind.
She moves through life with effortless certainty. She doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t second-guess. She is composed, steady, unshaken by the chaos around her. She knows exactly who she is, what she’s capable of, and she never has to convince herself of it.
She is me.
Or at least, she is who I hope to be.
Most days, I feel like I am chasing her. Like she is always just a few steps ahead, turning corners before I can reach her. She exists in the way I picture myself handling difficult conversations, in the way I imagine facing fear without letting it consume me. I catch glimpses of her in fleeting moments—when I handle something right, when I don’t let exhaustion win, when I make my daughters laugh—but she never lingers long enough for me to believe I’ve truly become her.
Today, she felt impossibly far away.
I woke up to the sound of my daughters’ voices carrying through the house. The soft murmur of my teenager talking about something she read online, the animated chatter of my youngest as she played with her dolls. Their voices pulled me from sleep before the sun had fully climbed into the sky, and for a few seconds, I let myself stay still, wrapped in the warmth of my blankets, existing in the quiet space between waking and doing.
It was the weekend. No alarms, no rushed mornings, no scrambling to pack lunches or find missing shoes. Just the slow, easy rhythm of a day that belonged entirely to us.
Still, time waits for no one.
By the time I stepped into the morning, the weight of responsibility had already settled over my shoulders like an old, familiar coat. There were dishes in the sink from last night, laundry waiting in baskets, grocery lists forming in the back of my mind. And beyond the walls of this house, there was everything else—the never-ending to-do list that stretched far beyond my kitchen, the expectations waiting for me outside my front door, the feeling that no matter how much I did, there was always more.
Doubt is a quiet thing at first. It lingers in the background, a whisper beneath the noise, a passing shadow. But then it grows. It finds cracks in your confidence, slipping through them like water through stone. It settles into your bones, convincing you that you are not enough, that you will never be enough.
And today, it was deafening.
The moment came suddenly, without warning. One second, I was standing there, moving through the motions, and the next, the world felt too big, the pressure too heavy, the air too thin.
I can’t do this.
The thought hit like a strike of lightning—sharp, electric, paralyzing.
My hands trembled. My chest tightened. The weight of every responsibility, every expectation, every worry pressed down all at once. I am not her. I am not the version of myself that I wish I was. I am not the person who moves through life untouched by fear, who stands firm no matter how hard the wind blows.
I closed my eyes.
And then, I saw her.
The version of me I’ve been chasing. The one who does not break under the weight of expectation, who trusts herself even when the ground beneath her shakes. She was there, standing just beyond my reach, waiting.
And so, I reached for her.
I straightened my spine. I took a breath. I let my daughters pull me into their world for a little while—board games spread across the floor, laughter filling the spaces where doubt had been. I handled what needed to be handled, not because I wasn’t afraid, not because I had it all figured out, but because I refused to let the fear win.
The hours blurred into moments, sharp and fleeting. But when the day finally slowed, when the dishes were put away and my girls curled up beside me on the couch, I exhaled.
I had made it through.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt her—not as a distant dream, not as an illusion I would never catch, but as something real.
Something already inside me.
Today, I became her.
And tomorrow, I will try again.