Not Like The Other Girls

Tonight, it hit me that I too have become like those girls because I’m not like the other girls.

When we were in school and a little younger. When any girl said “I am not like the other girls,” we or I often saw it as a plea to be different. It took me a while to accept that not every girl would love “Pink,” some love “Green,” while some love “Black.”

Tonight, it hit me that I too have become like those girls because I’m not like the other girls.

I have met, interviewed, and wrote about some popular women, a few influencers, and artist —women who are bright and magnetic—and yet, I couldn’t relate.

It’s a realization that has come to me before, but tonight, it came differently. Every so often, I find myself in a room full of women and feel a quiet distance. Not out of judgment. Not out of superiority because whomst am I?

Just a soft awareness that we’re living different lives.

I used to wonder if something was wrong with me because of this. Why couldn’t I just slip into the rhythm everyone else seemed to be dancing to? Why did I always feel half-invisible at events, half-distant even when conversations were warm? For a long time, it felt like a personal failure, some fundamental flaw in my ability to “connect” the way everyone else seemed to. I even studied if this was a developmental flaw.

But when I come here, I meet women who have lived, lost, tried again. Women who aren’t on their first chance at life. Women who aren’t obsessed with over-performing or performing at all.

Here, I meet the relaxed woman, the woman trying to relax, to take up space, loudly, boldly, even unashamedly.

I meet the woman who knows that becoming is her raw messy journey, not a brand.

On Pinterest, I see them too. Snapshots of women living fully, deeply, authentically. Although someone says authenticity is performance as well. Still, I make boards and whisper;

More of her.

More of me.

But in real life?

Sometimes it feels harder to find each other. Maybe because when we all converge — at brunches, at events, at chance meetings— many are still wearing masks, playing it safe, keeping things palatable, professional, perfect.

And maybe, there are also waiting to take off the mask when they feel safe enough to breathe or that’s their true selves.

Still I can’t help but notice that there is something different about women who have fought to become themselves rather than perform a version of themselves for approval. There is a softness in them, even when they are loud. There is a sensuality, a rootedness, a vibrancy that doesn’t require applause to be.

Women like me; Women cultivating their homes like sanctuaries. Women writing and living and loving in ways that are so imperfect but rich. Women taking up space not because they were handed permission slips, but because they decided they deserved to exist fully.

I am manifesting a life where I can live as sensually, boldly, and tenderly as the women I admire — not because it will look good on a feed, but because it will feel good in my body, my spirit.

I miss the conversations where someone talks about failing and not being ashamed. I miss the energy of women who had to learn how to laugh again and love it.

I used to think I needed to change to fit into these rooms. Be more polished. Be more ambitious in the right ways. Smile more tightly. Speak more carefully. Pretend I wanted what they wanted.

I love the woman who cries when something moves her, who isn’t afraid to say, “I don’t relate,” without shame. I love the woman who is building a life that feels good in private too as well as in public too.

You the woman reading this right now may know exactly what I’m talking about. Women who have felt out of place for a long time. Women who have looked around a room full of shiny and wondered, “Is there anyone here who actually feels like me?”

There are so many of us — the quietly radical, the soft warriors, the women who are becoming something too expansive to fit inside the neat boxes we are offered. And maybe we find each other less often in curated spaces because those spaces demand a kind of uniformity that erases the very real, messy, beautiful parts of us.

But we find each other here — in words. In long emails. In comment sections. In group chats. In quiet nods across the room when someone says something real. In Pinterest boards titled “Becoming” or “Home” or “Manifesting Abike 3.0”

Maybe the real gift is that we can recognize each other by our wounds, our healing, our journey, or by how alive we are. I am grateful for all because we may not be like others and that is not an accident. It is a quiet, beautiful, ongoing becoming. There’s a whole world of us,

Writing, living, breathing…

With love,

Winifred.