Re:Her

I don’t think I ever had a very complicated picture of the woman I would become.

I knew I would work and build a career around communication because, somewhere along the way as I was growing up, I realised that creativity, along with imagination and words, was something I was good at. I worked in social media, then at a magazine, studied public relations, became a publicist, and slowly grew into the person who could walk into a room and speak with confidence.

Well, mostly.

There was always a little bit of stage fright hiding somewhere. The awkwardness of speaking in front of a crowd. The tiny voice that wondered whether I was saying the right thing or whether people were judging me.

Perhaps it’s still there. I’ve just learned not to let it make decisions for me.

In the same way that I knew I wanted a career, I knew I wanted love. Marriage. Children. A family of my own. That part of the picture mattered to me too.

But there was another part of me that I understood very early on.

I needed to feel free. So, there was a career. There was a family. There was independence. There was, somewhere in the background, Mumbai.

My city. I never imagined leaving it. Some people live in a city. I think I belonged to mine. Mumbai was home in a way that is difficult to explain unless you’ve loved a city deeply. It was familiar, chaotic, exhausting, comforting, frustrating and completely mine. I could imagine changing jobs, getting married, having children, growing older.

But leaving Mumbai? That wasn’t part of the plan.

Of course, life has a funny way of ignoring our plans.

I moved countries and enjoyed rebuilding a life abroad. I started working as a freelancer. Then, I took a break from work I hadn’t planned on taking. But this break was very much needed to clear my head and figure things out.

I was soon blessed with motherhood — something I had wanted and planned for. But it arrived with its own unexpected twists and turns. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the picture I had spent years imagining began to look very different.

I found myself looking at my life and thinking something I suspect almost every person thinks at some point:

This isn’t how I thought it would be.

I was disturbed. Heartbroken. Disappointed. Scared.

Sometimes all at once.

And for a while, I think I was trying to understand whether the life I had imagined was gone completely, or whether I simply needed to find a different way of living it.

But here’s the thing.

I don’t think there is anything particularly extraordinary about having your plans change. Life does this to all of us. Sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once. We make plans with the information we have, and then life gives us something new to think about.

We just don’t always talk about what it feels like to stand in the middle of those changes.

What surprised me most was that, despite everything that had changed, I didn’t become the person I feared I might become.

Yes, I was broken, but I got hold of myself soon. I had to. There were people and things that were relying on me. Somewhere between everything that took place in my life, I’m glad I did not let it ruin my heart. And perhaps that is one of the things I’m most proud of.

In fact, I’m actually quite happy with the human I’ve turned out to be.

My younger self would probably be relieved to know that I kept some of the things she cared about most. My innocence. My kindness. My never-give-up, never-lose-hope kind of attitude, which has kept me grounded and helped me face the hurdles bravely.

I don’t think I am a completely different woman from the one I imagined I’d become. If anything, I think I’m still her — just with a few more stories, a few more scars, and considerably less certainty about how life is supposed to unfold.

Sometimes I wish I had become this strong and brave without having to learn it through every obstacle that came my way. But maybe that’s how strength works.

You don’t always get to choose how you learn it.

I’ve learned that unexpected twists can change everything you’ve carefully planned. I’ve also learned that perhaps the answer isn’t to stop planning altogether, but to become a little more comfortable with the fact that the plan might change.

The funny part?

My advice to myself would probably be: stop planning everything and go with the flow.

Which is excellent advice.

I just don’t particularly enjoy following it.

Yes, I’ve learned to go with the flow. I just prefer knowing exactly where the flow is going.

I’m still learning. I’m learning to be more courageous. A little braver and stronger. Better at making decisions without being paralysed by everything that might happen afterwards.

I’m learning to be brave before I’m forced to be brave.

I’m learning not to overthink every possibility, because I’ve realised that worrying about what comes next doesn’t actually make me more prepared for it.

And perhaps most importantly, I’m learning not to sacrifice my own happiness simply to keep everyone else comfortable.

For a long time, being a people pleaser felt like being a good person. I thought being considerate meant making sure nobody was disappointed with me. I thought being polite meant saying yes even when I wanted to say no. I thought keeping the peace was somehow the same thing as being kind.

I’m beginning to understand that they aren’t the same thing.

Being kind doesn’t mean constantly abandoning yourself or accepting everything. And being a good woman doesn’t mean making yourself smaller so that everyone around you can stay comfortable.

That is a lesson I’m still learning, but I know one thing for certain now:

I don’t want to be that woman anymore.

I don’t want to be underconfident. I don’t want to be afraid of making the wrong decision. I don’t want to spend my life worrying about what people might say, think or gossip about.

There will always be people who have something to say.

Let them.

I’d rather become the woman who keeps moving anyway.

The woman who can look at a difficult chapter and say, this didn’t break me.

The woman who can make a decision without needing everyone to understand it.

The woman who can choose herself without believing that doing so makes her selfish.

The woman who can be soft without being weak, kind without being a people pleaser, independent without feeling guilty about it, and ambitious without apologising for wanting more.

And perhaps that is the woman I’m becoming now.

Not a completely different woman.

Just a woman who is beginning to understand herself a little better.

Which brings me back to the idea of a reset.

For a long time, I thought a reset meant starting again. Leaving something behind. Becoming someone new. Drawing a line under the past and deciding that the next version of your life would be better.

But I don’t think I see it that way anymore.

Maybe a reset isn’t about erasing everything that came before.

Maybe it isn’t about pretending the difficult parts never happened.

Maybe it isn’t even about becoming someone completely new.

Maybe a reset is simply having the courage to reclaim the parts of yourself that got lost along the way.

Your confidence.

Your voice.

Your independence.

Your joy.

Your ability to make a decision and stand by it.

Your softness.

Your fire.

Yourself.

Because sometimes life doesn’t take those things away from us all at once. Sometimes we give them away slowly.

A little bit to expectations.

A little bit to fear.

A little bit to other people’s opinions.

A little bit to the need to keep everyone happy.

Until one day, we look at ourselves and realise that somewhere along the way, we became very good at being everything everyone else needed us to be — and forgot to ask what we needed from ourselves.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t think we always need to start over.

Perhaps sometimes we just need to come back to ourselves.

To the woman we were before we became afraid. Before we started second-guessing every decision. Before we confused being liked with being good. Before we forgot that our own happiness deserved a place in the picture too.