My Life Looked Nothing Like the One I Could See

I Knew What I Wanted. I Just Had No Idea Where to Start.

I saw a post the other day that said:

If you don’t know what to pursue in life, pursue yourself.

And I immediately thought, this is practically my story.
Not because I had no idea what I wanted.
I did.
I had a beautiful vision for my life.
I could see the woman I wanted to be. I could see how I wanted to feel. I could see a life with more freedom, purpose, energy, beauty and more of me in it.

The problem was that my actual life looked absolutely nothing like it.
Nothing.
And I honestly had no idea where to start.

That was the gap.

Having a vision sounds beautiful until you look around and realize there is a very large distance between the life you are living and the one you can see in your mind.
And unfortunately, no cute quote on Instagram tells you exactly what to do with that distance.

Who Was I After Cancer?

At the time, I was still very lost inside the cancer survivor identity.
I had survived, yes.
And I was deeply grateful.
But I also didn’t fully know who I was after it.

Cancer had taken over the story for a while.

The appointments. The treatments. The fear. The changes in my body. The changes in my hormones. The changes in the way I saw time, life and pretty much everything else.

Then suddenly, treatment was over.
Everyone was relieved.
I was relieved.
And life was supposed to continue.
Very simple.

Except it wasn’t.
Because the woman returning to that life was not the same woman who had left it.

A Life That Looked Fine From the Outside

I was a wife, a mother, a homemaker, and I was completely immersed in my handmade business.
And when I say immersed, I mean fully.

There was always something to make, something to package, something to ship, something to answer, something I had forgotten, or something that was already late and had now become a small emergency.
It was extremely time-consuming.

And for a while, it gave me something to focus on.
It gave me a role.
It made me feel productive.
It also kept me busy enough that I didn’t have to sit still for too long and ask myself the bigger questions.
Very convenient.

But deep down, I knew.
I knew that business was not part of the future I could see for myself.
I didn’t hate it.
That would have made the decision much easier.

I was really good at it. I had built it. People loved what I made.
But I could not see myself continuing that life forever.
I could not see the woman in my vision spending all day surrounded by orders, supplies, boxes and deadlines.

My life was full.
But it did not feel like the life I could see.

Grateful... But Still Wanting More

That is such a strange place to be.
Because from the outside, everything can look perfectly fine.
You have a family.
You have a home.
You have work.
You survived cancer.

So what exactly is the problem?
And that is where the guilt starts.

Because how do you say:
“I am deeply grateful for this life, but I also know it is not the whole life I am meant to live”?
How do you explain that without sounding ungrateful, dramatic or slightly impossible to please?

I didn’t know.
I just knew something had to change.

The vision was there.
The path was not.
I could see the destination, but I had no idea how to get there.
And no, there was not a neat little roadmap appearing in front of me with step one highlighted.
Honestly, that would have been helpful.

I Knew I Wanted to Help Women

I felt that very strongly after cancer.
I had learned so much about fear, health, identity, the body, the mind, and what happens when life suddenly forces you to look at everything differently.
I knew I could not have gone through all of that and simply return to life as if nothing had happened.

There had to be something more in it.
Some way to use it.
Some way to sit with another woman who felt lost in her own life and say:
“I understand. I have been there.”

That part was clear to me.
I could see myself helping women.
I could feel it in my heart.
What I could not see was how to get from where I was to that woman.

Wanting to Help Was Not Enough

Because wanting to help people and being ready to truly support them are not always the same thing.

I didn’t want to repeat things I had read in a book.
I didn’t want to give women a list of things to do while I was still disconnected from my own life.

I wanted to speak from experience.
I wanted my life to be evidence of what I believed was possible.
Not a perfect life.
Please.
But a life that showed what can happen when a woman decides she is not finished.

I wanted to become my own best testimonial.

I wanted to know what it felt like to rebuild my body, my confidence, my habits, my identity and my future.
So that when I supported another woman, I would not be standing on the outside giving her advice.

I would be beside her saying:
“I know this road. Let’s walk.”

That was the destination.
The part I could not figure out was the gap.

How did I become that woman?
Where did I begin when my current life looked nothing like the one I could see?

So I Started With Myself

I started with myself because I was the only part I could actually begin changing.

Before I could truly support other women in changing their lives, I had to be willing to change mine.
I had to live it.
I had to become the proof.

So I started with my health.
My body.
My energy.
My habits.
The way I spoke to myself.
The promises I kept making and not keeping.
The way I had slowly disappeared inside all the roles I was carrying.
I needed to feel strong again.
I needed to trust myself again.
I needed to stop waiting for clarity while living exactly the same way every day.

The Life Couldn’t Change While I Stayed the Same

Eventually, I understood something.

I was trying to create a completely different life while remaining the same woman inside the same patterns.
That was not going to work.

I wanted the confidence, freedom, energy and purpose of the woman in my vision.
But I was still making decisions from exhaustion, fear, habit and the identity of the woman I had been.

There was the problem.
So I began changing what I could.
What I ate.
How I moved.
How I cared for myself.
What I allowed.
What I kept doing simply because I had always done it.
I started paying attention to the things that made me feel alive and the things that drained me.
I started asking myself whether something belonged to my future or only to my past.

And little by little, I began to change.

Then the Path Started Appearing

As I changed, the path became clearer.
Not all at once.
Life did not send me a beautifully organized presentation with the next ten years outlined.
It would have been appreciated.

Instead, I got one step.
Then another.
An idea.
A certification.
A conversation.
A decision that made no sense to everyone else but made complete sense to me.
A stronger body.
More confidence.
A clearer voice.
The courage to stop doing things I had already outgrown.
The life did not appear first.
The woman did.
And then the life began to move toward her.

I Had to Become My Own Testimonial

That is why that post stayed with me.

If you don’t know what to pursue, pursue yourself.

Even when you do know what you want.
Even when you can see the vision clearly.
Especially when your life looks nothing like it yet.

Because the first step may not be starting the business, moving to the city, booking the trip or completely reinventing your life by next Tuesday.

The first step may be much less glamorous.
It may be going for the walk.
Changing how you eat.
Keeping one promise to yourself.
Admitting that something is over.
Taking care of the body that will carry you into that future.
Building the confidence you will need when the opportunity comes.
Becoming someone who no longer abandons herself every time life gets busy.

That was where everything started for me.
I thought I needed to know exactly how to create the life I could see.
What I actually needed was to become the woman who could create it.

The Vision Was There All Along

And no, that did not happen overnight.
It happened through small choices that looked completely unrelated at the time.
But they were not unrelated.
They were evidence.

Every time I showed up for myself, I became a little more like the woman in the vision.
Every time I made a decision that belonged to my future, the distance between the two lives became smaller.

Until one day, I looked around and realized things were moving.
I was moving.
The vision was no longer something I visited only in my imagination.
I was building toward it.

Maybe This Is Where You Are Too

Maybe you already know what you want.
Maybe you can see it beautifully.
Maybe the problem is that your current life does not resemble it at all, and you have no idea where to begin.

Begin with you.
Not because you are the problem.
Because you are the foundation.

Your body.
Your energy.
Your confidence.
Your standards.
Your ability to trust yourself.

Start there.

The next step will become easier to see from a stronger version of you than it ever will from an exhausted one.

That was true for me.
I had the vision all along.
I just had to become the woman who knew how to walk toward it.

And before I could help other women rebuild their lives, the first woman I had to help was me.

Let’s do this together.