The Many Women We Become — A Reflection Inspired by Betty Reid Soskin

I recently stumbled across a fourteen-minute video that felt less like content and more like a mirror.
It featured Betty Reid Soskin — a centenarian woman, luminous and grounded, speaking with a cadence that feels like someone placing a warm hand on your back.

In the clip (What It Feels Like at 101 from the Brief But Spectacular series), she reflects on the many women she has been.
Not the roles — the women.

Her voice is slow, steady, almost poetic as she recalls the identities she’s carried across a century. And as I listened, I realized something strange and beautiful:

I wasn’t just hearing her story.
It felt like I was hearing mine.

And I think if you watch it, you might feel it too.

Because there is something about Betty that feels familiar — like she’s the future version of all of us.
The woman we become if we keep living, keep growing, keep choosing ourselves again and again.

There’s a universality in her honesty. A recognition.
A whisper that says:

You are her. She is you.

The Quiet Truth We All Feel

As women, we move through so many versions of ourselves.

Daughter.
Sister.
Mother.
Partner.
Giver.
Creator.
Holder of things fragile and things necessary.

You’ve lived these identities too.
You’ve stretched yourself to meet circumstances you never saw coming.
You’ve shifted into new seasons without instruction or applause.
You’ve carried entire worlds inside you while tending the one outside.

And yet, beneath all the roles, there is still you —
the woman who wonders who she is when she isn’t being everything to everyone.

Betty’s words pulled that truth forward for me —
that longing to feel whole, even while life keeps asking you to split yourself in a hundred directions.

And I know you’ve felt that too —
that quiet ache of being deeply needed but not always deeply known.

The Unseen Center of a Family

Motherhood is profound in a way that becomes invisible through repetition.
Your presence is the pulse the whole family moves to.
You soften the edges.
You remember the needs no one else even sees.

You are the steady center of so much.

But what is centering you?

What holds you together when everyone else is leaning in?

Listening to Betty, I heard a truth wrapped inside her story —
not an instruction, but a reminder:

Finding yourself is not a one-time event.
It is a lifelong unraveling and returning.
You will become many women over many decades.
And that evolution is not a flaw —
it is the design.

The Small, Sacred Act of Returning to Yourself

Writing has always been my way back to myself.
Not curated writing.
Not writing with a purpose.
Just raw, unfiltered words.

I write what hurts.
I write what brings me joy.
I write what I’m afraid to say out loud.
I write myself back into the room.

Maybe for you it’s not writing —
maybe it’s painting, humming melodies in the kitchen, sketching, taking long walks, playing with color, or wandering outside until something inside you finally exhales.

But you have a doorway to yourself.
A practice that unlocks you.
Something waiting quietly for your return.

Please don’t ignore that doorway.
You need access to yourself — not someday, but now.
Even if it’s five quiet minutes stolen between bedtime and the dishes.

The Box in the Closet — And the Ache It Leaves

One part of Betty’s story stopped me cold:
she hid a box of her own music in a closet… for forty years.

Forty years of silencing a part of herself.
Forty years of keeping her own voice tucked away.

And when she shares that now, there is no shame —
only truth.
Only a woman who knows that hiding yourself never serves the world,
and it certainly doesn’t serve you.

The ache I felt wasn’t judgment —
it was recognition.

Because how easy it is to say “just for now,”
just this season,
just until life settles…

And suddenly a whole decade is gone.

A Gentle Pull Back Home

Maybe you see yourself in Betty the way I did.
Maybe you feel the quiet tug of the women you’ve been —
and the women you’re becoming.

Maybe you’ve tucked away parts of yourself too.
Dreams you promised you’d come back to.
Ideas you set aside.
A whole inner world waiting for you.

So here is your reminder — tender and urgent at the same time:

Return to yourself.
A little each day.
Protect the moments that keep you whole.

You are the glue that holds so much together.
But even glue dries out when ignored.

Let yourself feel whole.
Let yourself evolve.
Let yourself meet the woman you are right now —
and the lineage of women you carry inside you.

Because you are not just living your life.
You are living the echo of every woman who ever held a home, a heart, or a dream.

And you deserve to feel seen inside your own story.