Recently, I realized I have been grieving something I could not quite put into words. It was not a person, a job, or even one specific goal. I have been grieving an expected future.
When I was younger, I had a pretty clear picture of what my life would look like by now. If I am being honest, it was probably somewhere between a vision board and a Hallmark movie. I imagined adulthood eventually settling into something beautiful, secure, loving, and steady.
I imagined myself thriving in a loving marriage with a strong support system from both sides of our family. I pictured a big, beautiful home, more financial freedom, traveling with my children, and eventually building a successful business of my own. I thought if I worked hard enough and made the right choices, those things would naturally come together.
Some of those dreams came true. Some have not happened yet, some happened in ways I never could have predicted, and some still hurt when I admit how badly I want them.
For a long time, I interpreted that distance between the life I imagined and the life I was actually living as failure. I would look around and wonder, Why am I not where I thought I would be? Why hasn’t this happened yet? What did I do wrong?
Lately, though, I have started asking myself a different question.
Why am I measuring the woman I am today against a blueprint written by someone who hadn’t lived my life yet?
What Do You Do When Your Life Doesn’t Look the Way You Thought It Would?
I think I first became really aware of the gap after I had my first son. I had entered this huge new chapter of my life, but at the same time I became increasingly conscious of all the goals I was not accomplishing. Motherhood changed so much about my life that it also forced me to notice how different adulthood looked from what I had imagined.
There was the home I thought I would have created by now and the financial freedom I expected to have. There were the experiences I wanted to have with my children, including traveling with them more, and changes in my body that I had never imagined would affect the way I saw myself.
There was also the family support I thought would naturally surround us. I had pictured marriage and family almost like that Hallmark version of adulthood where everybody loves everybody, both families show up, there is a sense of community around you, and the hard things feel a little easier because you are not carrying them alone.
My actual life taught me that things are not always that simple.
For a long time, I looked at what was missing more than I looked at what had happened along the way. If something had not been accomplished on the timeline I originally imagined, I treated it like evidence that I was behind.
But the older I get, the more I realize that there was no way my twenty-year-old self could have accurately planned this life.
She had never lived it.
Is It Okay to Grieve the Life You Thought You Would Have?
I think this is one of the harder things to admit because grief can feel dangerously close to ingratitude. We are taught to appreciate what we have, and I absolutely believe in gratitude, but sometimes gratitude gets used as a reason to silence disappointment.
I can love my children deeply and still grieve that I have not been able to travel with them the way I imagined. I can appreciate owning a home and still wish I had created the bigger, more beautiful home I pictured for myself by now.
I can recognize what is good in my life while acknowledging what hurts.
Those things can exist together.
Grieving an expected future does not necessarily mean you dislike the life you have. Sometimes it simply means you are finally being honest about the space between what you expected and what actually happened.
There are dreams I still want. I still want more financial freedom, I still want to travel more with my children, and I still want to build a successful business that eventually replaces my 9-to-5.
I am not interested in pretending I suddenly do not care about those things simply because they have not happened on the timeline I imagined. What I am learning instead is that there is a difference between wanting a dream and using the absence of that dream as evidence that my current life is not enough.
Were Your Younger Self’s Dreams Wrong?
No. I do not think mine were wrong at all. My twenty-year-old self dreamed from the information she had, and she wanted love, security, family, success, freedom, and a beautiful life.
Those are not foolish things to want. She just did not know about motherhood yet, health challenges, complicated relationships, unexpected responsibilities, disappointment, changing bodies, or the thousand tiny ways adulthood would require her to become stronger.
She could not know because she had not lived it yet.
There are also things she thought she wanted that make me laugh now. At one point she apparently thought the boyfriend she had then might belong somewhere in this beautiful future.
Current me would just like to report back:
Girl, absolutely not!
And I think that matters too. If I can look back and laugh at something I once felt certain about, then clearly my younger self’s plans were never supposed to become permanent instructions for the rest of my life.
She was allowed to dream. I am allowed to edit.
Am I Behind, or Has My Definition of Success Changed?
My younger self probably would have looked first for visible evidence that we had made it. What kind of house do we have? How much money do we make? What does our body look like, where have we traveled, and what have we built?
I understand why she cared about those things because I still care about some of them too. I have not suddenly evolved beyond wanting financial security, a beautiful home, meaningful experiences with my children, or a thriving business.
But if she could actually meet me today, I think some of the things that would surprise her most could not be photographed.
She would see how resilient I actually am. She would see how strong and capable I am, and how many times life became harder than she could have prepared for while I kept finding a way to move forward.
More than anything, I think she would be proud that I do not give up on myself, even when it feels the hardest.
There was never a box for that on the vision board.
Maybe there should have been.
What If the Growth That Matters Most Isn’t Visible?
When I was younger, I would have built my goals mostly around things I could see. The house, the money, the body, the marriage, the career, the business, and the trips would have made up most of the picture.
If I could sit down with that younger version of myself today and create the blueprint again, I would still let her dream about some of those things. I would just ask her to build something underneath them first.
A stronger foundation.
I would put more inner work on the list. I would want us to build emotional strength, learn discernment, develop confidence that does not disappear when somebody else disapproves of us, and understand our boundaries before life forces us to create them.
I would want faith, peace, harmony, confidence, and happiness. I would want to know myself well enough that whatever I eventually built on top of that foundation would actually feel good to live inside.
Because now I understand something my younger self did not.
The internal life I build determines how I experience the external life I create.
I can have the beautiful house and still have no peace inside it. I can make more money and still live in fear, have the marriage and still feel alone, or reach the goal and discover that I do not trust myself enough to enjoy it.
So yes, I still want beautiful things for my life.
I just want to build them differently now.
How Do You Know Which Old Dreams to Release and Which Ones to Keep?
I do not think the answer is to throw away every dream you had when you were younger simply because your life changed. Some dreams still belong to you, while others belong to a version of you who no longer exists.
And sometimes the dream itself is not wrong at all.
Maybe only the deadline was.
I am learning to ask myself a different question now: Do I still want this? Not Shouldn’t I have this by now? or What will people think if I never accomplish it?
Not even, Didn’t I promise myself I would have this by thirty?
Do I, the woman living this life today, still want it?
If the answer is yes, I can keep building toward it. If the answer is no, I can appreciate the woman who dreamed it and put it down.
And if the answer is I honestly don’t know anymore, I can give myself enough room to find out.
That feels much kinder than dragging every old dream into every new season simply because I once wrote it down.
Maybe This Is Another Kind of Self Return
The more I think about Self Return, the more I realize it is not only about reclaiming pieces of ourselves that life pulled us away from. Sometimes returning to yourself requires looking at the life you are pursuing and asking whether you are still the one choosing it.
There are dreams we inherit from our families, our culture, social media, relationships, younger versions of ourselves, and ideas about what a successful woman should have accomplished by a certain age. Eventually, we have to decide what still belongs to us.
That is part of returning too.
It is not about becoming the woman I was before life happened. It is coming home to the woman I am now with everything I have learned along the way: more experience, more discernment, more evidence of what I can survive, and more understanding of what actually makes a life feel good from the inside.
I have not abandoned the woman who made those original plans.
I have grown beyond the ceiling she could see.
I am standing on another floor now, and from here I can see more.
If You Could Rewrite Your Blueprint Today, What Would You Put On It?
Not from the woman you were at twenty. Not from the timeline you thought you were supposed to follow or from what looks impressive from the outside.
From who you are today.
Would you still choose the same dreams? Would you change some, keep the dream but release the deadline, or finally add things to the list that cannot be photographed?
Peace. Faith. Discernment.
Confidence. Harmony.
Maybe you would want a home that feels safe instead of simply looking beautiful. Maybe you would want relationships where you can fully be yourself, work that gives you something beyond a title, or a body you care for instead of constantly criticize.
Maybe you would want a life you actually enjoy while you are building it.
Because I think that is what I want now.
I still have physical goals, financial goals, and very big dreams for my business, my family, my home, and myself. I have not stopped wanting more for my life.
I just do not want to build my life from the outside in anymore.
I want the foundation first.
Maybe one day I will have some of the exact things my twenty-year-old self pictured. Maybe some will arrive differently, and maybe I will discover that a few no longer belong in the picture at all.
But I do not think she would look at me today and ask why I failed to become the woman she imagined.
I think she would notice the woman I had to become along the way.
She would see that I kept going, kept learning, kept dreaming, and kept finding my way back to myself. And most importantly, she would see that even when life looked nothing like the Hallmark movie she ordered, I never gave up on myself.
Maybe I am not behind.
Maybe I am simply building from a blueprint that finally belongs to me.
I love every word! I can remember my younger self having some of these same thoughts and not know what to do and feeling like I failed. You have captured this very well. I am so proud of you Jazz! Love you sweetie ♥️
Aww thank you, I love you too 💕! I am glad that this resonated with you and to know that I am not alone in the way I’m feeling and experiencing womanhood.