Letting Go of the Woman You Thought You’d Be

The Blueprint That Didn’t Happen

Once upon a time, I thought I’d be someone entirely different. Like, properly different. A rockstar with wild eyeliner and crowds chanting my name. Or a biomolecular engineer creating superviruses. Or a mum with three kids and a white weatherboard house filled with toys and noise. I imagined myself as an author living in the Scottish Highlands, drinking whisky by the fire and typing out bestsellers with windswept hair. By 25, I was meant to be married. By 30, popping out babies. Somewhere in the middle, I was meant to finish a uni degree too. There were a lot of blueprints, none of which actually involved me being 42, single, living in Brisbane, with a fluffy black cat who bites my toes when he’s bored.

It’s not that I failed. It’s just that life had the audacity to be real. And the more I slow down and sit with myself, the more I realise that presence and curiosity have always carried me further than plans ever did. I got divorced. I found out I couldn’t have kids. I moved countries multiple times. I worked weird jobs and built websites and once accidentally spent five weeks living in a hostel in London. My life didn’t follow the script, and for a long time, that made me feel like I was behind. But when I started noticing the actual texture of my life – the conversations, the resilience, the quiet cups of tea on balconies – I realised I hadn’t fallen off track. I’d simply woken up to something deeper.

Letting go of the woman I thought I’d be isn’t about mourning. It’s about mindfulness. It’s about being honest with the present moment instead of dragging the ghost of your past expectations into every room with you. Because the life I have lived is wild and rich and chaotic in all the best ways. And the woman I have become? She’s gritty. She’s funny. She’s soft in the places that matter and fierce where she needs to be. She’s not who I planned to be, but she is exactly who I need to keep becoming – and that awareness is the whole point.

Sitting With the Real You

Here’s the thing about sitting with yourself: it’s damn uncomfortable at first. You look at all the parts you usually try to hide. The old dreams. The bruised hopes. The expectations that quietly expired without anyone throwing them a farewell party. But mindfulness teaches you to stay with those parts. To witness them. The version of you who thought it would all be sorted by now – she’s still part of your story, but she’s not the one holding the pen anymore.

When you really slow down and tune in, you begin to spot the stories you’ve outgrown. Maybe you used to believe that being loved meant being chosen. That success meant a salary and a house deposit and dinner parties with matching plates. That motherhood was the ultimate purpose. That the messier parts of you needed to be fixed. But spiritual intelligence gently invites you to question all that. To ask: who gave me those stories? And do they still belong to me?

This is where the real shift happens. You stop hustling for worthiness and start listening for truth. You claim the messy decisions, the lost years, the absolute chaos of being human – because mindfulness helps you see them not as failures but as teachers. You become the observer, the witness, the one who no longer needs to be perfect to be whole. That’s spiritual intelligence. That’s the quiet superpower that lives beneath the chaos goblin exterior.

Throwing Out the Timeline

If you’ve ever sat in a doctor’s office being told you can’t have children, you know what it means to grieve a timeline. Or when you’re signing divorce papers at an age when you thought you’d be making school lunches. Or moving back in with your mum after a failed overseas adventure. These aren’t just life events. They’re spiritual initiations. Moments where you’re asked to stop clinging to a future that no longer fits.

We’re fed this idea that life moves in predictable stages. School, uni, career, partner, wedding, house, babies, repeat. When you don’t follow that path, it can feel like you’re floating. But spiritual intelligence reminds us to drop the performance and come home to presence. To see each so-called detour not as a failure, but as a breadcrumb trail leading us deeper into who we really are. Timelines are illusions. Presence is where the magic is.

I’ve missed so many supposed milestones. I’m 42 and have never owned a Dyson. I’ve only just figured out the whole purpose of lymphatic drainage. But I’ve hugged strangers in the middle of London. I’ve cried in Parisian bathrooms. I’ve sat by rivers in Scotland and felt my soul settle. I’ve laughed so hard I spilled wine on vintage skirts and healed in ways that could never fit on a spreadsheet. That counts. That’s a life. And noticing it while you’re living it? That’s the work.

Letting Presence Guide You

Letting go isn’t a one-time event. It’s a practice. And it starts by being curious with yourself. Why am I still carrying this story? Who told me this was the right path? Am I actually unhappy, or am I just haunted by someone else’s idea of success? Mindfulness invites us into those questions, not to find perfect answers, but to notice what we’ve been too busy to feel.

Now, when I sit with myself, it’s not a battle. It’s a check-in. I ask: what does my nervous system need today? Do I need structure or softness? A hot cup of green tea or a walk barefoot on the grass? Do I need to spiral dramatically or just take a nap and start again? Growing is knowing the difference between avoiding life and tending to your actual aliveness.

It’s not about being calm all the time. It’s about being aware. Aware enough to laugh at yourself. To pause before you spiral. To catch the old programming in the act. To choose what you believe, again and again. It’s knowing that peace isn’t something you chase. It’s something you allow when you stop pretending your life should look any different than it does right now.

The Life You’ve Built Is Still Yours

Some days I look around my little flat and laugh. Because this wasn’t the plan. I was going to be a mum with a chaotic house and a pantry full of Tupperware. I was going to write books in a cottage and kiss my husband on the cheek while the kettle boiled. Instead, I have Lulu the cat, a shelf full of weird teas, and a habit of dancing to 1990s pop songs while meal prepping. And I love it.

I’ve built a life that fits me, even if it doesn’t look like the one I imagined. It’s not Pinterest-perfect. But it’s deeply mine. And it only started feeling that way when I gave myself permission to be here. To show up to my own life without needing it to be shinier, neater, more legible. Mindfulness made it beautiful. Not because it changed my life – but because it helped me see what was already sacred in the chaos.

So if you’re holding onto a version of yourself you thought you’d be, it’s okay to let her go. You can love her and still release her. You can say thank you and still move forward. Let your spirit guide you back to your centre. Let mindfulness help you fall in love with now. And trust that the woman you are becoming – the one with softness, presence, curiosity, and a wildly uncool but brilliant life – she’s the one worth showing up for.

We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In today's episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why we need to stop clapping for basic decency. You know the script. A man texts back within twenty-four hours and we're screenshotting it to the group chat. A man plans a date more than three hours in advance and we call him a unicorn. A man manages to listen, pay attention, and behave like a fully formed adult, and our nervous systems short-circuit because we genuinely don't know how to receive it.Here's the truth nobody is saying out loud. The bar has been dragged so low that Satan himself needs a chiropractor after a competitive round of limbo. We've been culturally trained to be grateful for behaviour that should not require gratitude. We've been told these things are bonuses when they're actually the entry requirement. And in the meantime, women have been quietly doing the basic decency thing forever, without applause, while men get standing ovations for outputs we generated for them.Today we're talking about why a great man is genuinely just an average woman, who benefits when the bar stays low, the invisible labour women have been performing for free for centuries, and the friend-test that cuts straight through every excuse we've ever made for mediocre men. Let's get into it.For more visit BryJaimea.com or follow over on IG @BryJaimea

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