I spent years refusing to acknowledge who I am in exchange for checking boxes off a list of who I was supposed to be.
I traded pieces of myself for the illusion of a life well lived.
I shoved down all the things that made my flame glow, all the things that made my passion burn. I tucked away the wild and whimsical wonder that once lived so freely inside me. I buried the curious little girl who believed in magic, who wandered barefoot through the grass, who collected rocks and feathers and found entire worlds in the pages of books.
I told her to grow up.
To be practical.
To be responsible.
To be respectable.
And I pursued the professional career, the white picket fence, the steady paycheck, the responsibilities, the expectations, and the endless list of things that supposedly defined success.
I became very good at being who I thought I was supposed to be.
I learned how to smile through exhaustion, how to push through discomfort, how to measure my worth in productivity and accomplishments. I learned to introduce myself by my job title, to justify my existence through the work I performed, and to feel guilty whenever I wasn’t doing something useful.
I became so consumed with building a life that looked good from the outside that I stopped asking whether it felt good on the inside.
And perhaps the saddest part?
I called it living my best life when I wasn’t really living at all.
I don’t think we always recognize when we begin to lose ourselves.
It rarely happens all at once.
There isn’t some dramatic moment when we decide to abandon our dreams, silence our creativity, or tuck away the parts of ourselves that make us feel alive.
Instead, it happens quietly.
We stop painting because there isn’t enough time.
We stop writing because there are more important things to do.
We stop wandering because there are errands to run.
We stop dreaming because dreams don’t pay the bills.
We stop asking questions because we’ve been taught that adulthood means having answers.
And somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves that these sacrifices are simply what it means to grow up.
We trade wonder for routine.
Curiosity for certainty.
Passion for productivity.
Authenticity for acceptance.
And we become so accustomed to the weight of expectations that we forget what it feels like to walk without carrying them.
But here’s something I’ve come to understand.
There is a difference between growing up and growing away from yourself.
Responsibility isn’t the enemy of joy. A career isn’t the enemy of creativity. Stability isn’t the enemy of adventure.
But when we begin sacrificing everything that makes us feel alive just to maintain the appearance of having it all together, something inside us begins to wither.
Not because we are incapable of happiness.
But because we have forgotten to make room for it.
Sometimes I think about the younger version of myself.
The girl who wasn’t afraid to get dirty. Who could spend hours wandering outside, fascinated by the smallest creatures. Who found beauty in strange things and comfort in the company of animals, trees, and books.
The girl who believed that life was supposed to be an adventure.
She didn’t care about professional titles.
She didn’t measure her worth in accomplishments.
She didn’t worry whether her interests were practical or whether her imagination made her seem strange.
She simply existed.
Wild.
Curious.
Creative.
Wonderfully and unapologetically herself.
At some point along the way, I taught her that wasn’t enough.
I told her she needed to become someone important.
Someone successful.
Someone worthy of respect.
As though she wasn’t already worthy simply because she existed.
I wonder how many of us have done the same.
How many artists stopped creating because someone told them art wasn’t a real career?
How many writers stopped writing because their words weren’t making money?
How many dreamers stopped dreaming because the world convinced them that imagination was childish?
How many of us have spent our lives apologizing for the very things that make us who we are?
And how many of us are walking around with a quiet ache in our chests, mourning a version of ourselves we don’t even realize we’ve lost?
There is something rather peculiar about crows.
They are intelligent, curious, playful creatures.
They collect things that catch their attention. They investigate their surroundings. They remember faces, solve problems, and sometimes seem to delight in the simple act of being alive.
They don’t concern themselves with whether their curiosity is productive.
They don’t apologize for being drawn to strange and shiny things.
They simply follow their nature.
I think there is a lesson in that.
For years, I tried to become something polished and predictable.
I wanted to be taken seriously.
I wanted to be successful.
I wanted to be enough.
And in that pursuit, I convinced myself that the artist, the writer, the dreamer, and the wild little crow inside me were somehow less valuable than the professional woman I was trying so desperately to become.
But those things were never separate.
I can be intelligent and whimsical.
Professional and creative.
Responsible and adventurous.
I can care deeply about my work and still recognize that my work is not the entirety of my existence.
I can be a grown woman who believes in science and still finds magic in the moonlight.
I can appreciate stability while longing for wild places.
I can have responsibilities and still make time to sit beside a creek, paint something strange, write poetry, or lose myself in a story.
I do not have to choose between being a responsible adult and being a person who feels alive.
And neither do you.
Rediscovering yourself isn’t always some beautiful, romantic awakening.
Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.
Sometimes it means admitting that the life you’ve worked so hard to build doesn’t fit quite the way you thought it would.
Sometimes it means grieving the years you spent trying to become someone else.
It means confronting the expectations you’ve internalized and asking yourself whether they were ever truly yours.
Do I actually want this?
Does this bring me joy?
Am I pursuing this because it matters to me, or because I want someone else to be proud of me?
Who would I be if I stopped worrying about what everyone else thought?
Those questions can be terrifying.
Because when you’ve spent years defining yourself through what you accomplish, it can be difficult to recognize who you are without the titles, responsibilities, and expectations.
But perhaps that’s where the real work begins.
Not in reinventing ourselves.
Not in becoming someone entirely new.
But in gently uncovering the person who was there all along.
The one buried beneath the obligations.
The one who still gets excited about thunderstorms and wildflowers.
The one who wants to create something simply because creating feels good.
The one who longs to wander, explore, learn, and experience the world with wide-eyed wonder.
The one who has been quietly waiting for permission to exist.
You are allowed to want more for yourself than a checklist. I am not suggesting we abandon our responsibilities, quit our jobs, or run barefoot into the forest never to return.
Although, I must admit, the forest does sound rather appealing some days.
I’m suggesting something much simpler.
What if we stopped treating joy like something we have to earn?
What if creativity didn’t have to become a business to be worthwhile?
What if rest didn’t have to be justified by exhaustion?
What if adventure didn’t require a plane ticket or an elaborate vacation?
What if success wasn’t measured solely by the size of our homes, the titles on our business cards, or the number of things we’ve accomplished?
What if success could also mean waking up and recognizing the person staring back at us in the mirror?
What if it meant feeling connected to ourselves?
Having the courage to explore our interests?
Making time for the things that make our hearts race with excitement rather than anxiety?
What if a life well lived wasn’t about checking every box?
What if it was about discovering which boxes never belonged to us in the first place?
Dear Little Crow,
I spent a long time trying to become the woman I thought the world wanted me to be.
I worked hard.
I followed the rules.
I chased the accomplishments.
I checked the boxes.
And for a while, I thought that meant I was doing everything right.
But somewhere beneath the professional clothes, the responsibilities, the expectations, and the carefully constructed version of adulthood, there was still a little crow scratching at the walls.
She wanted to paint.
She wanted to write.
She wanted to wander barefoot through the grass and collect strange little treasures.
She wanted to believe in magic.
She wanted to create things that didn’t need to serve a purpose beyond making her heart happy.
She wanted to live.
And I spent years telling her to be quiet.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
I don’t want to reach the end of my life and discover that I spent all my time maintaining an existence instead of experiencing one.
I don’t want to measure my days solely by how much I accomplished.
I want to remember the sunsets.
The books that made me cry.
The paintings that left color beneath my fingernails.
The muddy trails.
The conversations that made me think.
The songs that made me dance when nobody was watching.
The moments of laughter, wonder, curiosity, and connection.
I want to remember what it felt like to be alive.
Not just useful.
Not just successful.
Not just respectable.
Alive.
And perhaps that is what Crow and Flame has always been about.
Not becoming someone new, but finding my way back to the pieces of myself I once believed I had to abandon.
Learning that healing isn’t always about fixing what’s broken.
Sometimes it’s about remembering what was beautiful before the world convinced us to hide it.
Sometimes it’s about giving ourselves permission to be strange, creative, curious, imperfect, and wonderfully human.
Sometimes it’s about realizing that the flame never truly went out.
We simply buried it beneath everything we thought we were supposed to be.
And sometimes, dear little crow, the bravest thing you can do is stop following the path someone else laid before you.
Step into the wild.
Get your feet dirty.
Follow your curiosity.
Make something beautiful.
Make something terrible.
Make something simply because you want to.
Let yourself be a beginner.
Let yourself be ridiculous.
Let yourself be free.
Because you were never meant to spend your entire existence checking boxes.
You were meant to experience the extraordinary, messy, heartbreaking, beautiful wonder of being alive.
And that little flame inside you?
The one you spent so many years trying to extinguish?
Feed it.
Watch it glow.
And remember—
You were never meant to fit inside the box, little crow.
You were born with wings.
A Little Reflection for Your Own Journey
Take a moment this week to ask yourself:
- What parts of myself have I hidden to meet other people’s expectations?
- What did I love doing before I started worrying about whether it was productive?
- When was the last time I did something simply because it brought me joy?
- What is one small thing I can do this week to reconnect with the person I used to be?
You don’t have to change your entire life overnight.
Sometimes reclaiming yourself begins with something as simple as picking up a paintbrush, opening a book, taking a walk, or remembering an old dream.
The crow doesn’t need permission to fly. And neither do you.
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