I Am Not Behind

Thirty-three weeks into the year, I find myself thinking about time differently. Not in the frantic way I used to counting what I have not done yet, measuring myself against deadlines I never agreed to, wondering if I have already wasted too much time.

More like , how much of my life have I spent waiting to feel ready to become myself? It is day 225 of the year. There are 140 days left. Something about that does not make me anxious, it makes me honest. 2026 reduces to a one: a year of beginnings, initiation, identity, independence. A year of planting something new. But I am not beginning from scratch. I am beginning from everything I have survived. Everything I have learned. Everything I have lost. Everything I have outgrown. Everything I have carried.

I have been alone for a long time. I am an only child. I grew up with an alcoholic mother. I did not have siblings beside me, someone who could look across the room and say, Yeah, I remember that too, someone who could help me name what was happening while it was happening. So much of my emotional life was something I had to navigate alone. People sometimes misunderstand what it means when someone has minimal or no contact with their family. They imagine one dramatic rupture: one betrayal, one final argument, one unforgivable event. Sometimes that is the story, mine is more complicated than that.

Sometimes distance is not born from one moment. Sometimes it is the accumulation of years: relationships that do not feel emotionally safe, reciprocal, nourishing, or aligned. The slow realization that love, proximity, and family titles do not automatically create belonging. I am not interested in writing an indictment of anyone. I am interested in what the absences taught me. When no one is consistently tending to you, you can begin to believe your needs are too much. When people do not reliably show up, you can decide that dependence is dangerous. When you do not feel chosen, you can quietly wonder whether other people are simply easier to love than you are, and when the place you are supposed to belong does not feel like home, you start asking a question that follows you for years; Where exactly is my place?

So I became self-sufficient. That is the plot twist. The things people may call strengths in me my independence, perception, intuition, work ethic, ability to keep going did not appear out of nowhere. They have a history. I became capable because I had to be. Independent because depending on others did not always feel safe. Perceptive because reading the room mattered. Intuitive because I learned to notice what was not being said. Hardworking because achievement can become evidence: proof that I am worthy, proof that I deserve to be here, proof that my life can amount to something. That does not make my strength fake. It means my strength has a history. Somewhere inside that history is my inner teenager.

My inner child wanted love. But my inner teenager started noticing. She began to understand that her experience was not like everyone else’s. She compared. She questioned. She formed beliefs about herself and what she could expect from people. Maybe one of those beliefs was: I do not need them. That sentence has held both power and grief. Sometimes, “I do not need anybody,” is freedom and sometimes it is a teenager deciding, I will never put myself in the position of needing someone who may not show up for me. I understand and honor that girl, but I am not a teenager anymore. I cannot spend the rest of my life organizing myself around what happened when I was one. I must ask myself harder questions now.

What if some of the things that protected me then are limiting me now? Maybe isolation protected me, but now I want community. Maybe invisibility protected me, but now I am building a public body of work. Maybe perfectionism protected me from criticism. But now I am trying to create. Maybe hyper-independence protected me from disappointment, but now I am learning how to receive. Maybe staying small protected me from rejection, but now I am being called to be seen.

That is what Leo season feels like to me. Not generic confidence. Not performance for performance’s sake. A threshold. Leo asks me to come out from behind the curtain. To create. To take up space. To let my work have a face. To let my heart be visible before I feel completely healed, confident, or certain. There is something tender about that for a woman whose childhood taught her how to survive without being adequately witnessed. The girl who learned to live unseen is becoming a woman willing to be seen, and my dreams are part of that becoming.

My writing. My spiritual work. My business. My creative voice. My body. My visibility. My intellectual life. My desire to build something that belongs to me. I used to think pursuing my dreams was only about ambition. I am beginning to understand that some of it is grief work. Every time I show up for the life I want, I am telling an earlier version of myself: Your life was not supposed to end at the circumstances you were born into. You were allowed to become more than what you survived. You were allowed to desire a life that feels safe, visible, creative, connected, expansive, and yours.

So, 33 weeks into the year, I am not trying to cram an entire life into the remaining 140 days.

I do not have to catch up.

I do not have to prove that I am not behind.

I do not have to abandon the versions of me that got me here.

The neglected girl.

The abandoned girl.

The insecure girl.

The teenager who decided she did not need anybody.

The young woman who learned to survive.

The adult who became incredibly capable.

The woman who is tired of carrying everything.

The dreamer who kept dreaming anyway.

None of them need to be destroyed. They just need to stop running the whole operation. I get to lead now. I do not think this season is asking me to become someone I have never been. I think it is asking me to become the version of myself that all those earlier versions were trying to protect.

The girl who wanted to belong.

The teenager who wanted to be seen.

The woman who learned to survive.

The dreamer who kept dreaming anyway.

They are all still here. I am not abandoning them. I am finally taking them with me. Thirty-three weeks into the year, there are still 140 days left. I am not behind. I am not starting over. I am beginning again. This time, I am showing up for the life I have been dreaming about.