Let's be blunt.

From the time you were old enough to absorb the world around you, you were being taught a very specific set of lies.

That you aren't quite capable enough. That money is complicated and better left to someone else. That ambition is attractive until it isn't — until it threatens someone, until it competes with motherhood, until it makes you too much. That the workplace wasn't really built for you. That your body will betray you. That your emotions make you unreliable. That you need to be managed, supported, guided — by systems, by men, by institutions that have never once been designed with you at the center.

And here's what happens when you grow up inside that.

You don't always see it structurally. You're young. You're trying to survive. You're looking around at a world that keeps telling you you're not quite enough — and you start looking for the fastest way out.

And the fastest way out that the culture offers you?

Become irresistible.

Become the hottest version of yourself. The most desirable. The most sexually compelling. Learn the right moves, wear the right things, cultivate the right kind of mystery — and find a man who will choose you. Because if the right man chooses you, the world that wasn't built for you suddenly opens up. His money becomes accessible. His status becomes yours. His confidence fills the space where yours was never allowed to grow.

It feels like power. It is not power.

It is outsourcing your life before it has even begun.

And I don't say this to shame you. I say this because I was inside it too. Because the pipeline from you're not enough to become the most desirable version of yourself and find someone to hold your life is not a personal failing.

It is architecture.

And you deserve to see it clearly before it costs you everything.

Before I go further — a necessary pause.

I am a white woman writing this. And this starting point is not universal.

For women of color the work of belonging to yourself happens inside systems that have never been neutral — systems that have extracted not just energy but bodies, labor, land, and children across generations. The idea of simply choosing yourself lands differently when the world has spent centuries telling you your self was not yours to keep.

This piece doesn't reach everyone from the same place. I wanted to name that before continuing.

Romance is one of the most effective distractions ever invented.

One day you're building something — a career, a sense of self, a creative life — and then someone walks in and suddenly everything reorganizes around them. Their schedule. Their needs. Their becoming.

We do this so naturally we don't even notice it happening.

We are wired for connection — that part is real and worth honoring. But we now live in a time where we can consciously choose who we let into our lives. We are not limited by geography or circumstance the way women before us were.

That is a power most women don't use.

You will probably have several relationships before the one that fits. That's not failure. That's education.

You might connect with someone because they're ambitious and that energy excites you. Because they have a financial mindset you've never encountered and suddenly the world feels bigger. Because they move through life with a confidence you haven't built yet in yourself.

Good. Feel all of that.

But learn from it. Actively. Deliberately.

Don't just enjoy the ride and walk away with nothing when it ends. Absorb their discipline. Their money mindset. The way they negotiate. Let proximity to their strengths show you what's possible — then build it yourself.

Because when that relationship ends — and some of them will — you should leave with more of yourself than you arrived with.

That is the only metric that matters.

Building yourself first is not selfish. It is the most generous thing you will ever do.

A woman who knows herself brings something real into a relationship. Not performance. Not people-pleasing. Herself.

And that woman doesn't lose herself in love. She brings herself to it. Fully. Without apology.

This isn't about avoiding love. It isn't about swearing off relationships or deciding motherhood isn't for you or building walls so high nothing gets in. Connection is real. Love is real. Motherhood can be one of the most profound things a human being experiences.

This is about making sure you are still in there when it all arrives. That you don't disappear into it. That love becomes something you bring yourself to — fully, eyes open — instead of something you lose yourself inside of.

There is a difference between a woman who chooses love and a woman who uses love to escape herself.

Know which one you are.

One last thing.

I'm not sure I could have heard any of this at 27 even if someone had said it directly to me. There are things that only land when life has shaken you enough that the old story stops working. If you're not ready — that's okay. Let it be a seed.

But if something in here cracked open even slightly —

Stop waiting for someone to make it safe enough to begin.

Build that first.

The relationship that deserves you will find a woman who already is at home in a house she built. 

🪩 Journal Questions

Where did you first learn that being chosen mattered more than choosing yourself?

What have you organized your life around that was never actually yours to carry?

Think about your relationships. What did each one teach you — and did you leave with more of yourself or less?

Where are you letting someone else's momentum carry you instead of building your own?

What would you be building right now if you weren't waiting for someone to make it feel safe enough to begin?

If you belonged to yourself completely — what would you stop tolerating tomorrow?