What did you leap toward at nine before anyone told you to sit back down?
I know what mine was. I spent decades circling back to it. Here's what finally happened.
The Dream You Stopped Asking About
I was nine years old, sitting in our den on a Saturday night watching Lawrence Welk with my parents, when I saw her.
The woman at the piano.
Blonde bouffant. Hands moving so fast they blurred. Playing like it was the most natural thing in the world, like joy had simply decided to come out through her fingers.
And something in me leapt.
Not metaphorically. I actually got up from the easy chair, walked into the living room, sat down at our piano, and started playing. Because I just knew I could do that. Knew it the way nine-year-olds know things — completely, without evidence, without doubt.
Underneath that knowing was something else I didn’t have words for then.
Maybe if I could do that, they’d pay attention to what I want.
They didn’t ask.
Nobody did.
That’s not a complaint about my parents. It’s an observation about a generation.
We were taught to be responsible. Pretty. Well-mannered. Come home early. Don’t stay out late. Don’t take up too much room.
Dream? Nobody mentioned that part.
And so we didn’t. Or we did and then stopped. Or we kept dreaming quietly, privately, the way you keep something precious that nobody else seems to think is worth keeping.
And then life happened. Career. Family. Caregiving. The thousand obligations that fill the years so completely you forget there was ever anything else.
Until one day the structure ends.
And you’re standing in your own life, responsible and well-mannered and completely at a loss —
What do I actually want?
Here’s what I’ve learned about that question.
It doesn’t need a plan. It doesn’t need a timeline. It doesn’t need to be practical or profitable or explainable to anyone at a dinner party.
It needs permission.
Just — permission.
Permission to say the thing out loud. Even quietly. Even just to yourself. This is what I wanted before I learned to want the right things.
The piano. The painting. The writing. The thing you leapt toward at nine before anyone told you to sit back down.
What was it for you?
I’ve been thinking about this so much lately that I made a video about it. About the dream I had at seventeen that I set down and then spent decades circling back toward without quite landing.
About what it finally felt like to land.
If you’ve been carrying something similar — a dream that got postponed rather than lost, a want that went quiet but never quite disappeared — I think you’ll recognize yourself in it.
Watch: I had this dream at 17. Here’s what happened when I finally lived it.
Because postponed is not the same as lost.
And the dream doesn’t need to be achieved in order to matter.
It needs to be acknowledged. Felt again. Allowed back into the room.
That’s where everything begins to change.
Not with a plan.
With a question.
What if I let myself want this again?
Just that.
Just — what if.
If something in this story stayed with you — if you felt the recognition before you felt the words for it — I want you to know there’s a place for that.
I’ve been quietly building something called the Monirose Soul Circle. It’s a small group of women who are done waiting for their life to feel like theirs again. Not a support group. Not a place to process pain, though we understand it. A place to think out loud with women who have lived enough to know what they’re talking about — and who want peers, not cheerleaders.
We share what’s true. We ask the real questions. We hold each other to the version of ourselves we’re trying to grow into, not the version we’ve been performing.
If you’re just beginning to understand that you’re allowed to want what you want — that’s exactly the right moment to come in.
You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be done pretending you don’t care.
Come see if it feels like home.
And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.