I was watching my daughter play on the floor last week, and out of nowhere, I thought, I want to be someone she can be proud of. Not proud of my job or how put together I looked. Proud of who I actually am.
That thought sat with me longer than I expected. Because if I’m honest, I didn’t really know who that person was.
For a while, I was stuck in what I now call shiny object syndrome. I’d open my phone looking for directions and find twenty different ones. A course promising to show me the way. A coach with the answer. Someone else’s success story that made mine feel behind before I’d even started. I’d get excited about one idea, then scroll a little more and get excited about a completely different one. More scrolling. More options. More confusion. I never gave myself the chance to sit still long enough to find real direction, a purpose I could actually commit to instead of chasing.
So I stopped. I put the phone down and started journaling instead. Not about what was trending or what was working for someone else, but about what I actually wanted. What I valued. What I believed, underneath all the noise. The version of me I was quietly hoping to become.
That’s when it clicked. Motherhood isn’t about turning into someone new. It’s about becoming more of who I already am, just with the parts I’d buried or ignored finally given room to grow.
She’s someone you chase, but she’s also already you.
She’s someone you chase, but she’s also already you.
Here’s the part I think we skip too often. We spend so much time asking what our kids need, what our partner needs, what will finally work for us because it worked for somebody else online… We rarely turn that question inward and ask it about ourselves. Who do I want to become? Not who should I become to keep up.
I believe this matters because no path works long-term if it isn’t rooted in you. You can follow someone else’s ten steps perfectly and still feel lost, because their path was built for their values, not yours. Ginhawa, that feeling of ease and breathing room after you’ve been holding everything together, doesn’t come from finding the right course. It comes from knowing yourself well enough to recognize when a path actually fits.
So before anything else this month, sit with this question. Who do you want to become? Not for your kids, not for your feed, just for you. You don’t need the whole answer today. You just need to start asking.
With love,
Kristen
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