The Shape My Joy Takes IV: The Woman I am becoming

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.

Some days, I am silk.
Weightless and warm. I move through morning like a prayer—slow, barefoot, soft with knowing. I light a candle not for what it shows me, but for how it feels. I cradle my mug like a psalm. I water the basil. I hum without realising. I say I love you for no reason except that it’s true. There are days I ache from beauty alone.

Some days, I am thunder.
I speak without shrinking. I do not ask twice. I close the door that should have been closed years ago. I answer the phone like a woman who owes the world nothing but her boundaries. I walk into rooms with the kind of grace that makes people stand taller. Not because I asked them to. But because I reminded them what power looks like.

Some days, I am flame.
Not wild, not destructive—just steady. Ancient. I burn for what matters and nothing else. I cook dinner to the sound of Nina Simone. I rewrite history with one quiet refusal. I protect what’s mine without apology. I don’t need to raise my voice. The heat of my presence says enough.

Some days, I am tired.
And I honour that, too. I let my body rest, not because I’ve earned it, but because I exist. I sleep in. I cancel things. I cry. I disappear into a warm bath and come out reborn. I do not shame myself for needing gentleness. I’ve learned that softness is not the opposite of strength—it is what strength feels like when it’s no longer defending itself.

And some days—most days—I am all of them.

I am softness that bites back. Steel wrapped in velvet. A sunrise that doesn’t beg to be watched.

I am the girl who still sings in the car like she’s sixteen, who cries at the final page of books, who writes her pain into poems and then reads them aloud in a whisper, just to hear how far she’s come.

I am the woman who calls herself whole, even with the cracks.
Especially with the cracks.

I am not a single story. I am not a clean arc.
I am a hundred beginnings and a thousand endings.
And every version of me is worthy.

The world once asked me to choose—soft or strong, quiet or commanding, small or palatable or pretty.
But I do not answer to those questions anymore.
I do not flatten myself to fit inside someone else’s understanding.

I have chosen to be every woman I’ve ever needed.
And every day I become more of her.

Not for anyone watching. Not to prove anything.
But because I can.
Because I’m free.