Confidence usually comes later.
Curiosity arrived first.
Whispering quietly:
What if…
I wonder…
Could I?
What happens if I try?
Lately,
those thoughts have been growing louder.
Now,
possibility seems to appear everywhere I look.
There are moments
when I feel like a child in a candy store,
wide-eyed at all the possibilities again.
That growing sense of wonder
has surprised me more than I expected,
something I reflected on more deeply in The Wonder Before Me.
For so long,
survival took up most of my life.
Now,
parts of myself
are quietly waking up again.
Life once felt smaller.
Safer.
More limited.
Most of my energy
went into simply
getting through the day.
Back then,
I no longer knew
how to dream.
And almost no connection
remained to the version of myself
that once wanted more from life.
Now something feels different.
Small sparks
keep appearing.
Not all at once.
Just quiet moments
that catch me off guard.
Sometimes I catch myself
wanting to share pieces of myself again.
Other times,
I picture myself finally wearing
the styles I once convinced myself
were not meant for me.
None of it is really about clothes.
Or sharing.
It feels deeper than that.
More like an emotional shift
quietly unfolding inside me.
Imagination
expanding by leaps and bounds.
Expressing my growing desire
to let my true self emerge again.
A desire to participate in the world again
instead of only watching it pass by.
Strength feels different now.
Not forced.
Not survival.
Relearning how to trust myself again
has become part of this journey too,
especially in learning to trust myself again.
As that trust has slowly returned, I have noticed my relationship with life changing too. The world around me feels more inviting, more possible, and I wrote more about that shift in Summer Feels Different This Year.
More like slowly realizing
that I may still be capable
of becoming more than I once believed.
I explored that realization more deeply in
Who Am I Becoming.
Dreams I stopped reaching toward
have started stirring again.
Curiosity.
Wonder.
Possibility.
And honestly,
that surprises me most of all.
Because confidence did not walk through the door first.
Curiosity did.
