Letter No. 16 | The Fourth Ginhawa Principle: Grow Into Her

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There was a season when I kept thinking, I should be more than this.

Not in a harsh way. It was more like a quiet nudge that wouldn’t go away. A feeling that there was a version of me I kept putting off.

And the hardest part wasn’t the feeling. It was realizing I wasn’t doing anything about it either.

I told myself: I’m a mom now. Maybe this is just what life looks like for a while.

But even as I said it, I knew I didn’t fully believe it.

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I started journaling in my early days of motherhood. Nothing structured, nothing fancy. Just me, a notebook, and whatever came out.

What I found surprised me. I wasn’t lost. I just hadn’t sat down long enough to get honest with myself. I didn’t know, in clear and specific terms, what I actually wanted. What kind of woman I was trying to become. What kind of life I was quietly hoping to build.

The journal didn’t hand me answers. It gave me better questions. And the questions, slowly, gave me direction.

That was the beginning of what I now call the fourth Ginhawa Principle: Grow Into Her.

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Not into someone new. Not into the mother you see on someone else’s feed. Into yourself. The woman who already knows what she values, what she’s working toward, what she’s here for.

She’s not far. She’s just been quieted by everything you’ve been carrying.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: identity isn’t something you either have or you don’t. It’s shaped by what you do repeatedly. By the story you tell yourself about who you are. And when your actions and your story start to match, something settles. Not a loud confidence. Just a quiet, steady one.

That alignment starts small.

When you wake up and take your supplement and move your body a little and sit with something warm and give yourself even five minutes of quiet, you are not just getting through a morning routine. You’re telling yourself something. I am someone who shows up for herself.

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Say that enough times with your actions, and you start to believe it. Believe it long enough, and it becomes true.

That’s what made this feel urgent for me, not just as something I wanted for myself, but as something I wanted my daughter to see. Not a perfect mother. Not a woman who has it all figured out. Just a woman who knows what she values and keeps showing up for it, even on the days when it’s just five minutes and a warm drink before the noise starts. If she grows up watching that, she’ll know it’s possible for her too.

And honestly, that woman isn’t someone I’m waiting to become someday. She’s already here, just being uncovered slowly, through the questions I keep asking myself, through the small things I keep choosing, through the ordinary days I’m building into something that actually feels like mine.

So after your ritual today, however small, however imperfect, say this to yourself: I am becoming someone who takes care of herself. Not someday. Right now. Because you just did.

Growing into her isn’t becoming someone new. It’s remembering who you were, returning to what you value, and expanding slowly, one small act at a time.

With love,

Kristen

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