Step into Your Most Expansive Self.
In 2010, I started an online community for women. We reached thousands of women with our daily posts on SheLoves Magazine. We shaped an ethos around our Manifesto, called “Let Us Be Women Who Love.” I spent the next 12 years, walking with hundreds of women, mostly writers, and speaking to thousands of women at conferences. I also hosted an circle with about 12 women in my living room for over 8 years. My message was: How do I get more free?
Then I wrote a book about leaving Whiteness, grappling with my racial identity and growing up White during Apartheid in South Africa.
In 2021, I lost my dad and soon after my mom. At that point, there was one question that kept rattling in my brain:
If I had 20-30 healthy years left to live, is this how I really wanted to live?
When I got quiet, I knew it was not. I needed to make very big changes. It was hard. Very hard. This was not the dream I had for myself.
And yet, there was one day when I realized, staying where I was would mean abandoning myself.
I couldn’t do that.
It was scary. But deep within myself, I also knew this was the next right step.
My question became: What does the most fully alive version of myself look like?
Stepping into our most expansive Self has a cost. And it’s not one big step. It’s a thousand little decisions. There’s no arrival.
When we honor our most authentic Self, we simply keep becoming. We keep expanding. And we meet ourselves in new ways along the way.
So many times, I’ve noticed saying to myself: O, there you are!
This journey requires courage. It asks for your truth. It requires crossing thresholds and stepping into your biggest fears.
This journey is about remembering who you truly are. Calling back all the parts of yourself you’ve abandoned or tucked away along the way. All the parts of yourself you’ve silenced, hidden. All the times you’ve assimilated. All the parts that had no room in the places you found yourself in.
Your Most Expansive Self is waiting for you.
It’s time to call back all of yourself to yourself.
Remember
Who You Are.
Yes, That One.
How dare you?
How dare you not?
Your wildly powerful, audacious Self is the life calling to you from your dreams.
She’s the roar in your bones.
She’s the whiff of something more in the wind.
She lurks in your disappointments. She shows up in your jealousies.
Tune her out? Stay small and safe.
But on days when you sense her close, she's your inner Lioness.
She's every part of you on the other side of your biggest fears.
She’s the one who knows: