SHORT LAYERD LOB
FACE FRAMING
The Woman I’m Becoming Again
I grew up surrounded by love, the loud, beautiful kind.
A big family. Close friends. Goa in the background like a permanent postcard… sunlit afternoons, beach winds, laughter that didn’t need a reason, and memories stitched together by togetherness. It wasn’t perfect, but it was full. The kind of childhood that leaves you feeling like you always belong somewhere.
And maybe that’s why I always believed dreams could come true because life started by showing me warmth.
I carried a childhood dream quietly for years: I wanted to be an air hostess.
Not for glamour, although it did feel glamorous in its own way but because it meant freedom. It meant becoming someone. It meant stepping out into the world with confidence, polished hair, a bright smile, and a sense of purpose that was entirely mine.
And when it happened, when I actually became one, it didn’t feel unreal… it felt right.
Like a part of me had finally arrived.
Then life gave me another dream, the kind that feels like fate when it happens.
I married an army pilot.
Even writing that still makes my heart smile a little, because it truly felt like another dream come true. I had love, I had direction, and I had people — friends who held my hand through different stages, family who reminded me who I was when I forgot, and a life that seemed to be unfolding exactly the way I once imagined.
Everything was aligning.
Until it wasn’t.
There was a loss that changed me in a way I didn’t know words could explain.
I had a miscarriage… and it broke my heart.
It’s the kind of pain that lives quietly inside you. The kind of grief that doesn’t always have an audience, because the world moves on faster than your heart can. It leaves you holding prayers for someone you never got to hold in your arms — a baby you still think about in silence.
I carry those prayers even now.
For my baby in heaven.
For the little soul that will always be part of my story.
And then… life softened again.
I had a baby boy.
My son.
The love I felt wasn’t normal love — it was a whole new language. He didn’t just make me happy… he changed the meaning of happiness. He didn’t just make me a mother… he made me understand what it means to live for someone outside of yourself.
My heart reached heights I didn’t even know existed.
Motherhood, though… motherhood is not easy.
It asks for everything.
And I gave it everything.
I enjoyed it deeply, even in the exhausting moments — the sleeplessness, the constant giving, the way a mother’s mind never truly rests. I poured myself into it fully, because I knew what it meant to lose. I knew how fragile joy could be. So I held onto my son like he was the answer to every prayer I had ever whispered.
And he was.
But now, time is moving.
My son is growing up.
And somewhere along the way, I started to feel something I didn’t expect.
Lost.
Not as a mother — I know who I am in his world.
But as a woman in the real world.
The version of me that had dreams, ambition, sparkle, identity… she feels distant sometimes, like a photograph from another lifetime. There are days I look in the mirror and wonder when I became someone who’s always strong, always holding it together, always doing the right thing… but quietly forgetting what I need too.
And lately, I’ve been feeling something shift.
A gentle pull back to myself.
Because as much as my son needs me… he also needs to know me.
Not just the mother who sacrifices.
Not just the woman who gives.
But the woman who lives.
The woman who dreams.
The woman who becomes.
I want him to see me at my best.
I want him to know the person I used to be — and the person I’m becoming again. I want him to grow up watching his mother choose herself too, not out of selfishness, but out of strength. Out of love. Out of example.
Because one day, he’ll understand that a mother can love deeply… and still grow.
And maybe that’s what this chapter is for.
Finding myself again.
Not to go back to who I was…
but to finally step into who I’m meant to be.
This is not just my story.
It’s my return.