Somewhere ahead of where you currently are, there is a version of you who has done more of the work. Who is clearer about who she is. Who has practised the self-respect you are still building. Who has made the difficult choices you are still working up to making. Who has learned, through the accumulated experience of trusting herself, that her judgment is actually worth trusting.
She would not be finished. She would not have arrived at some final, permanent destination of self-knowledge. But she would be further along. And from where she stands, she would have something specific to say to where you are right now.
The specific confusion of the middle of the work — the not-yet-knowing, the still-partly-doing-things-the-old-way, the clarity that arrives and then dissolves and arrives again — does not last indefinitely. The work produces something. The honesty accumulates.
She would tell you that the clarity you are reaching for is real, and reachable. Not all at once. But progressively, with each honest choice and each returned-to question, until the outline of who you actually are becomes more legible to you than it currently is.
The times you already knew — and talked yourself out of it, explained it away, gave the benefit of the doubt you did not actually have to give — she would tell you to trust the knowing sooner.
Not to become rigid or suspicious. But to give genuine weight to what you actually perceive. The knowledge is often accurate before the reasoning catches up to it.
The quality of connection you imagine is possible — genuinely mutual, genuinely respectful, genuinely sustaining — is not a fantasy. It exists. The woman you are becoming has closer access to it than the woman you currently are, because she has done more of the work that makes her available to receive it.
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The work is not in service of an imaginary destination. It is in service of something that is real and increasingly accessible as the inner architecture becomes clearer.
Not to be less honest — to be kinder in the honesty. The woman who has done more of the work knows that the distance between where you are and where you are going is not evidence of failure. It is the shape of a journey that takes as long as it takes.
She got where she is by taking it seriously — not by condemning herself for every misstep, but by continuing to return to the honest inquiry even when the inquiry produced uncomfortable answers.
Whatever it is that you already know you need to do — the honest conversation, the decision that has been pending, the limit that needs to be stated, the situation that needs to be left — she would tell you that beginning is better than preparing indefinitely.
Not impulsively. Deliberately. But sooner than you think you are ready.
Related: The Woman Who Knows Her Worth · Self-Trust Is the Foundation · On Choosing Yourself Without Apology
The woman you are becoming is already in motion. The Good Girl Delusion is the work that moves you toward her.
Nancy GLO
Reflective storyteller & style curator for women becoming
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