๐ง Listen to this letter on Spotify / Apple โ reflection at the end.
โ
Dearest Reader,
This week I did something that felt completely unhinged for someone who has spent years posting on Instagram only when she felt like it.
I joined a creator intensive VIP cohort. Which means I am now showing up publicly 3-7 times a week whether or not I feel ready. And I did it on purpose.
I did it because I watched every woman in my last three Table cohorts go through something in one month that most people spend years waiting for. They arrived with their ideas half-baked, their confidence under the radar, their plans tentative. They left knowing exactly where they were going and why.
And I sat there watching their breakthroughs in real-time and thought, I need that for myself too. I want a room that stretches me. I want people who understand that cringe is part of the P&L, who want to dance with risk, who know that uncertainty isn't the enemy of building. It's the condition of it.
So I signed up. Even though part of me still hears the voices that said you should only post business content, you shouldn't curse if you want to build a brand and be taken seriously, you should stay in your lane.
I don't do lanes. And neither should you.
Because I never feared starting over. I feared continuing living a life that no longer felt like my own.
โ
"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases." โ Carl Jung
I think about this when I watch someone measure their becoming against someone else's timeline and decide they are behind. (I know the feeling because I used to do it).
There is no correct order of operations for becoming who you are meant to become. That recipe doesn't exist. What exists is your specific path, your specific timing, your specific thing that is currently forming in the dark.
You are not behind. You are brewing.
And I want you to understand what I mean by that because it is not a comfort thing and it's not a reframe to make you feel better.
๐๐ฝ Brewing is a specific feeling. It is the feeling of being on the verge of something massive, a shift you can sense but cannot yet see, cannot yet name, cannot yet prove to anyone around you. It lives in your body before it lives anywhere else.
That feeling is not confusion. That feeling is information. But we were not taught to respect the information our bodies provided. We are taught to intellectualize it which is just another form of protection.
So I want to offer a framework I always go to and share with others:
The bow and arrow. ๐น
To propel forward, you must pull back. And even though the pull back feels like regression, like stalling, like nothing is happening, it is not stalling. It is the gathering of momentum. The arrow cannot fly without the tension. The tension is not the problem. The tension is the point.
Every single woman in the May cohort said some version of the same thing at their final check-in: I am not behind. I am exactly where I need to be.
That realization sounds simple. It is not simple. It is one of the hardest things a human being can arrive at because everything around us is designed to make us feel behind. The algorithm, the comparison, the version of yourself you promised you'd be by now, the version of you that promised you'd take care of your parents by now. ๐ฎโ๐จ
So we consume more at our own expense and call it research.
You are right on fucking time.
When you are brewing, you have to be protective. Not defensive, not closed off, protective.
Intentional about who gets access to the tender thing that is forming.
โ
The world is full of people who will call your vision naive before it has had the chance to prove itself. People who will offer their doubt disguised as concern. People who are too afraid to be fully themselves to understand someone else choosing it.
They cannot be in your inner circle right now. This is not pettiness. This is strategy. Architecture.
The people around you while you are brewing will either protect the momentum or drain it. Choose accordingly. And if you're not sure who those people are yet, that clarity is part of what's coming.
I printed out every note in my notes app this week. Pages and pages of thoughts I'd written to myself at 2am, ideas I'd bookmarked for later, love letters, poems, quotes that gave me a reprieve from the mental noise. Then I started reading them out loud.
๐คณ๐ฝ Go open your notes app right now. I can bet you have brilliant things in there you've been saving for a later that keeps not arriving. Dreams you bookmarked because the moment didn't feel right. Things you want to say but are waiting until the timing was perfect.
The moment is now. Imperfect and uncertain and exactly right.
What I'm leaving here for you this week:
Grow through what you go through. Don't waste a lesson feeling bad for yourself, it is part of your story, it is part of the plot, and one day you will hand it to someone who needed exactly that chapter. You don't need to know yet. It is so freeing to say "I don't know what I want yet". Show up anyway. Let it be imperfect. Let it be cringe. Let it be seen. Because the version of you that stays hidden helps no one, not you, not the people who need what you carry.
We are so hard on ourselves. And we are exactly where we need to be. Both of those things are true at the same time and sitting with that is deeply uncomfortable.
That discomfort is not a sign that something is wrong. (Even though the thoughts in your head will make you feel like you are doing something wrong.) Believe me when I tell you that itโs the opposite.
It is the feeling of becoming. And becoming doesnโt have a linear timeline. It is always on your time.
Until the next letter,
Vanessa
P.S. I've committed to posting 3-7 times a week on Instagram. Come watch it happen. I'll be there whether or not you do. But I'd rather you be there. @vanessasantosleonโ
P.P.S. The Glow Up and The Table folks will get the tea on all of it ๐ต
โ