The Shape My Joy Takes IX: Dreaming In Colour Again

This is a collection of essays not about surviving—but about living. Not about pain—but about presence. These are not reactionary—they are revolutionary in their refusal to look back.

This is a 10-part series of personal essays. Check back each day to read the next essay.

Want more softness, strength, and quiet joy? Click here to read the full Shape My Joy Takes series.

There was a time I stopped dreaming.

Not all at once. Not dramatically.
Just… slowly. Quietly. Like a candle burning down to nothing while I convinced myself I never really needed the light.

I told myself it was maturity. Or realism. Or focus.
I learned how to make do. How to stay grateful. How to live without wanting too much.

But the truth is—I was afraid.
Afraid to hope for more in a world that had already asked me to settle so many times.
Afraid to look forward in colour when life had been handed to me in greyscale.

So I folded my dreams down small.
Tucked them in drawers. Called it discipline.
Called it surviving.

But then something beautiful happened.

I got quiet enough to hear them again.

Not the old dreams—the ones that belonged to a version of me shaped by other people’s approval.
These were new ones.
Wilder. Softer. Stranger. Mine.

Dreams that didn’t care about being impressive.
Dreams with dirt under their nails.
Dreams that giggled. That played. That wore oversized sweaters and spoke in full sentences.

I started dreaming of things that had nothing to do with “should.”
I dreamed of bookstores with creaky floors and mismatched chairs.
Of a garden where my daughters could chase chickens and name them ridiculous things.
Of waking up in a house filled with laughter and music and the smell of coffee.

I dreamed of writing words that made people cry and laugh and breathe deeper.
Of falling asleep next to the same man for sixty years.
Of teaching my dog a new trick just because we both like the challenge.

I dreamed of publishing my books.
Of holding them in my hands and knowing that every single word was mine.
I dreamed of being read. Really read. Quietly, intimately, by people I’ll never meet—people who will feel seen by a sentence I wrote on a Tuesday.

I started dreaming in colour again.
Bright, impossible colour.
Not because someone told me I could—but because I finally realised no one could stop me.

There is something holy about a woman who chooses to want again.
Who risks softness after surviving sharpness.
Who paints her own future with brushstrokes that make no sense to anyone but her.

I want a life that smells like lemon and lavender and fresh rain.
I want a porch with chipped paint and string lights.
I want a business that runs on joy and integrity.
I want a farm with goats and donkeys and space to breathe.
I want my girls to see me reaching, not shrinking.

I want more. Not because I’m ungrateful.
But because I was born to build things that didn’t exist before I imagined them.

This time, I am not dreaming quietly.
I am not dreaming politely.
I am dreaming like a woman who knows she can survive the dark—and still chooses to paint with light.

And if these dreams never land where I thought they would, that’s okay.
Because even the dreaming itself is a revolution.
Even imagining this life cracks something open.
Even hoping again means I’ve already won.