Becoming — September 2026
I Still Like the Woman I Built
I built a very polished version of myself on purpose. I still like the woman I built. I’m getting to know her when she has less to prove.
I built a very polished version of myself on purpose. I still like the woman I built. I’m getting to know her when she has less to prove.
I built a very polished version of myself on purpose.
Perfect was the assignment. Look perfect. Speak well. Be accomplished, agreeable, impressive. Know how to behave. And make it all look effortless, because apparently trying that hard was also supposed to be invisible.
I got very, very good at it.
The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of what looked like confidence was protection. If I could be pretty enough, accomplished enough, useful enough, pleasant enough, maybe I could become impossible to reject.
My father wasn’t really in my life. For a long time, I turned that absence into a verdict about myself. Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe there was something I could become that would make me worth staying for.
So I kept becoming more.
The complicated part is that I actually like the woman I built. I like being polished. I like beautiful things. I like ambition. I like walking into a room looking completely put together.
I’m not going to pretend all of that was fake just because some of it started as armor. The effort was real. The accomplishments were real. So was the pleasure I took in them.
But there was a lot riding on how other people responded. Being admired felt good. Being disliked could send me straight back to wondering what was wrong with me and what I needed to fix.
Over the last several years, I finally dealt with the rejection underneath all of it. I forgave my dad. Somewhere in that process, I stopped treating somebody else’s approval as evidence of my worth.
That did not turn me into some perfectly healed, spiritually evolved woman.
Please.
I’m still vain sometimes. Competitive sometimes. Defensive sometimes. I like looking good, being impressive, and winning. I can also be so convinced I’m right that I need to stop and ask myself whether I’m being an asshole.
That remains a useful question.
But I am much less afraid of being disliked. And the effects of that have shown up in places I didn’t expect.
I speak up more. When something violates my values, I have a much harder time pretending I don’t see it. I can say no, even when someone is disappointed. I can make a room uncomfortable and tolerate the discomfort myself.
I can let someone misunderstand me without launching a full internal investigation into how I need to change myself so they’ll like me again.
That version of me has created more friction, including with other women. That has been hard for me to process. I believe in women supporting women, and I care about those relationships. Disagreement can still hurt, even when I’m willing to live with it.
I’m also learning that being more confident doesn’t make my interpretation of every conflict correct.
Sometimes someone may be threatened by me. Sometimes I’m triggered by them. Sometimes we are both bringing our own bullshit into the room, each fairly convinced the problem arrived with the other person.
I have to leave room for that possibility.
Is this person actually treating me badly? Or am I so busy defending myself that I’ve stopped listening?
Possibly both.
I want to be able to stand by what I believe and still hear something uncomfortable about myself. I don’t always manage it. But being less dependent on approval gives me more room to consider criticism. I can be wrong about something without making it a verdict on who I am.
That’s what authenticity means to me now: being able to see more of myself clearly and stay honest about what I see.
The ambition and the insecurity. The strength and the fear. The pleasure I take in beautiful things and the times I still want someone to be impressed. I don’t have to pretend the less flattering parts aren’t there. I also don’t have to decide they make everything else fraudulent.
I spent the first half of my life trying to become impossible to reject. I think this half is about refusing to reject myself.
There is still something useful to ask when the old urgency shows up: Do I want this? Or am I trying to make sure someone approves of me?
Sometimes the answer is both. I want to be honest about that, too.
I still like the woman I built. I’m getting to know her when she has less to prove.
Twenty years in the making.
A space for the messy, beautiful middle.