Consider the Wildflowers

A fourteen year old girl sits in the car with her mom, daydreaming as she gazes out the window. She is thinking of the future–of whom she might be when she is eighteen, when she is twenty-two, when she is twenty-three.

That girl is you. That girl is me.

I often think back to the girl I was and the expectations I had for the girl I would one day become. When I was fourteen, I thought the older me would be braver. I thought she would be fearless. I thought she would feel like a woman–that she would be confident and sure of herself and unstoppable.

The reality is that I am not that girl I dreamed I would be. But I don’t think anyone can be her. I think she’s a little too far out of reach–a little too ideal. A little too perfect to be human–too perfect to be real.

I will say that I am still afraid of many things, but I try them anyway. And that, to me, is brave. I still walk side by side with fear, but I think that I welcome him as a friend rather than my enemy. I don’t feel like a woman every day. That little girl still lives deep inside of me. But I think instead of shutting her out, I do all of the things she would have wanted to do. I chase the dreams she was too young to chase, I wear the clothes she was too afraid to wear, I speak up in times that she would have not. And that, to me, is how a woman would be. I am not always confident–in fact, that is a rarity. But each day, I wake up and relearn what it means to love who I am today. And that, to me, is an everyday pursuit of confidence.

I think back to that fourteen year old girl, and it brings tears to my eyes. I love her and all of the experiences and discoveries she has left in front of her. But I do not linger in that memory for very long, because I know she would be proud of who she has become and I know she would want us to keep moving forward.

I hope you feel the same for yourself, too.