Someday I Hope to Be You

It is a profound thing to become someone else’s aspiration.

“Someday I hope to be you.” Or “I want to be you in my next chapter.”

I have heard some version of this multiple times this past year. From clients. From wildly capable women leaders. From women I deeply respect.

They are usually talking about becoming coaches, strategic partners, advisers. About building a values-aligned practice. About carving a self-directed path that finally feels like their own.

And every time someone says it, I feel deep humility. Gratitude, power, truth, and also… humility.

Because comparison has been one of my most persistent, sometimes crippling albatrosses. I still work every day to interrupt the stories I tell myself about how much better other people are doing.

When my kids were little, this was brutal. I would look at other moms and feel certain they were living the family life I was somehow failing at. Not enough play. Not enough park time. Not enough projects. I would watch what looked like ease and torture myself with the belief that they had figured something out that I had not.

Ugly, I know.

Also, have you met my now 19- and 16-year-olds? They are freaking awesome.

And then there is my body.

Being a fat woman in this culture is not neutral. It is loud. It is constant. It often hurts like hell. For years, one of my coping mechanisms has been compulsively scanning thinner women and idealizing their bodies. Constantly believing their lives must be easier. Better. More lovable. More successful.

Comparison became reflex.

It still can be. It is much softer than it used to be.

So to now have people look at me and say, “I want to be you,” feels clearly like coming home. It taps me into a deep knowing that I have aligned my work and my way of being with my purpose and my truth. That I chose thriving and heart-song over who and where and how I thought I was supposed to be, or was told to be.

It is the outgrowth of a ton of practice. Therapy. Coaching. Spiritual direction. Brutal self-honesty. Falling down. Getting back up. Letting go of identities that no longer fit. Choosing alignment over approval, again and again. And I will be on that path forever. It is who I am. But the longer I am here, the more it becomes the way I walk through the world. No longer a lift, but a stride. With plenty of bumps to navigate.

It is walking alongside yourself for decades. Unlearning. Relearning. Softening. Strengthening. Reclaiming.

What I suspect these women are naming when they say they want to be me is definitely not actual me.

They are naming sovereignty.

Inhabiting your own life. Building something that reflects your values, desires, and heart-song. Trusting, again and again, that your way is not “the way,” but it is your way. Living inside your own truth. Not apologizing for your power. Working toward being at home in your body, even if you are not all the way there.

I have many moments a week where I look sideways. Where I compare. Where I feel behind. The difference now is that often, I catch it. And I do not build an altar to it.

If you are in a season of looking at someone else and thinking, I wish I could be her, I get it. I have lived there.

But the version of you someone might someday whisper that about is not built through comparison or striving or endless courses, trainings, degrees, marketing tools, or algorithms.

She is built through returning to yourself. Over and over.

Through filtering noise as noise. Through strengthening the muscles of trust, self-love, and the deeply imperfect practice of believing you are exactly who and where you need to be.

Even when that place feels hard as hell.

The woman someone says “I want to be” is a woman who keeps showing up for herself.

[And if you are a man reading this, same rules apply. Your noise is different. The process is not.]