I Am Whoever I Say I am

A letter to my younger self and anyone else who needs it

I can’t put my finger on it, but the end of 2024 is the end of an era for me. I can feel it in my bones as I purge my work area, rework art in my home, and write out my visions for the coming year - a big year full of things I can feel sprouting out of my the deepest part of myself.

Three unbelievably long years ago, in late November I sat in the same living room I am sitting in now and let my then-husband know that I had given everything I could, and now my will to give anymore was inarguably dead. At the time it felt like I was jumping off a cliff into bedrock. That is to say, I felt as though I wasn’t going to make it out alive.

If I were making a timeline of significant events in my life, that night in November would be marked. It was the first step of a toddling baby. And in every sense of the analogy, I was a toddling baby. Stumbling, crying, entirely unsure of herself, and at the mercy of her surroundings until step by step I worked up the muscles in my toes, feet, calves, quads, and core. Until my tongue learned to form words. Incapable yet of sustaining herself in the way her new life would require of her but learning at rapid pace with every moment passing.

2021 me was tiptoeing. 2021 me was ashamed and terrified. 2021 me was extremely invested in everyone’s perception of me (and tormented by the fact that it wasn’t always good). 2021 me was demolished by panic. 2021 me didn’t have a clue how she was going to figure out how to come out of the next month above 0 dollars, much less survive once the spousal support ran out in a few years.

And at the end of 2024, I am sitting in the house I’d feared I’d lose, glowing from the inside out, waiting on the paperwork to terminate my spousal support a year early. Because, simply, I don’t want it anymore.

Earlier this year, I faced the choice of taking an office job where I needed to be in the building from 8-5pm every weekday, or making a bet on myself. I couldn’t figure a way to live the life I wanted with that office job, but I was terrified to try something riskier. When I turned down the job, I was thinking about something I had written to my daughter a few years back: Do the brave thing. Bet on yourself. Decide who you want to be and then be her. So I did. I followed my heart with the fuel for my movement being that I simply couldn’t fail, my children needed me to succeed. So I did.

This note is an ode to those of us who’ve spent a lifetime waffling to and fro about the truth of our own capacities, the validity of our own desires, or the intensity of own power to be and do what we feel pulled to. Toddling in certainty about our ability to flourish and expand beyond our timid dreams. This is for you. Three years later, I don’t recognize the 34 year old who could hardly uncurl her midsection and match the gaze of people working to intimidate and belittle her in the wake of her sharing her voice.

I am sending a letter back to my past, to her, to anyone who needs it, I need you to know: you will bloom. You will become whoever you say you will. So start speaking clearly. Say it with your chest. Write it on your heart. And then go fucking do it :)

In your corner,

Jolie

p.s. I have one spot left for my New Year’s Power Hour sessions, a limited offering in my coaching where we spend 80 minutes on a call together, working through your values and goals for 2025 (and some systems to help you achieve them) or clarifying what limiting ideas you’ve had about yourself and the world, and learning how to write better stories for yourself. You can read more about (and grab a spot for) the Power Hour here.

Wishing you a peaceful holiday and an abundant new year!