“Your voice is always there for you. I promise.”
Everyone loves a good glow-up story — the dramatic before-and-after that photographs and videos love. The tease, wouldn't you love to know where I got that glow? The marketing-ready reveal, the successful book launch, the numbers, the categories, the awards.
But here's the truth: the public glow-up is only possible after you've done the work. That's why they say it takes ten years to become an overnight success.
The transformation people see? It's real. But you need to create and tend to it long before anyone's watching.
Once upon a time, I didn't want my own story. In my darkest moments, sometimes I still don't. Blasphemy, I know. But I promised to tell you the hard truths. And, that’s one a lot of writers don’t want to admit.
What’s harder than writing? The daily practice of becoming the non-judgmental witness to my own life. Add to it, radical self-acceptance and self-love. And then, working to change what isn’t working for me.
Powerful shifts rarely announce themselves. They begin in the unseen moments, like when you're writing that book no one has seen or read yet. You've completed enough drafts—and changed your life accordingly —and you’ve yet to launch or publish.
Maybe you're still reckoning with yourself, and it's taking up all your bandwidth to transform your story into something you can live with. That’s okay.
More and more, I recognize my own transformation in quiet. The blessing of birdsong—the way it calms and reminds me that when I'm present and still, peace is all around me, even if the world, according to my reels, is a dumpster fire. And this is where I can’t help but share the wisdom of my own Nonna, the original Clementina, who always reminded me, “It’s not the world, it’s the people in it.”
The birds didn’t stop singing years ago when I began the long and arduous process of divorce; I had no capacity to hear them. It’s a cruel irony to realize that when my nervous system needed them the most, they could’ve sang their little hearts out, and I wouldn’t have heard them over the five-alarm fire of my fears.
Your voice is the same way. And I promise you it is always there for you. You just need to show up for it. Breathe. Listen.
Actively finishing my book means slowly rebuilding my relationship with my truth. It means consistently turning down or muting what’s outside while I work. For readers, it will be a nearly 300-page book they can order from Amazon with a click and devour in a few days. For me, it's been ten years in the making, and it's changed me entirely. You might want to prepare for that...no matter what impact your writing has on the world, the biggest and most profound change starts with you and your commitment to the work, your devotion to the truth.
Lin-Manuel Miranda said, “To engender empathy and create a world using only words is the closest thing we have to magic.” I agree, the intimacy I've shared with authors I'll likely never meet will never cease to amaze me. It's why I believe in books and the people who write them so wholeheartedly. Each is a reminder that we can begin again with the story we wouldn't choose if we knew better, or at all, at least not consciously.
Remember, I told you I once didn’t want my own story? The meaning I’m determined to make of it, the questions I’m determined to answer, have become my lighthouse, my North Star, the reason I press forward, especially on days the world seems full of darkness. I put my head down and summon my own light.
When I left my old life three years ago, my top priorities were learning to trust myself to create a new reality for my boys and me, one with fewer restraints and more possibilities. I kept writing when I could, wishing I could write more or that the whole process would move faster. Had I a magic wand, I might have wished myself to the finish line. And, like any chaos that ensues from a genie in a bottle or Big Anthony in charge of Strega Nonna's pasta pot, I wouldn't have been ready. I didn't yet have the bandwidth or a repaired enough nervous system to handle the public-facing "glow up."
To say it another way, in my impatience, I'd have made the wrong wish at the wrong time. I needed time to change how I listened, who I listened to, and who had access to me (spoiler alert: fewer and fewer people), as I learned how to expand my faith and trust myself.
You can't rush the transformation. And despite what our culture goes to great lengths to make us believe, there are many experiences more valuable than efficiency and speed. Writing a book can be transformative because it forces you to face yourself on the page. From there, you have two choices: abort your story or evolve. The latter is no quick fix.
Which brings me to an underlying question inherent in this post: Does transformation have to be visible to count?
No. And, you're often hidden for protection.
One day, out in my old garden, I saw something strange hanging from the back deck. When I got closer, I realized it was a cocoon; inside, a moth caterpillar was breaking down while nature protected it from harsh weather and predators. You cannot hasten a moth from a cocoon without killing it, nor bring someone to consciousness they’re not ready for without confusion, not even yourself.
The glow-up people see—claiming your voice, launching your book, the confidence—that's real. But it's not where the work happens. It happens in the pages no one reads while you break yourself down and rebuild into someone who can finally advocate for the truth in those pages.
You can't skip the breaking down. You can't rush the rebuilding. The caterpillar doesn't emerge from the cocoon the same creature it was when it went in—it liquefies, reorganizes at a cellular level, and becomes something entirely new. That's what writing your story does when you choose devotion. Your story doesn't document your transformation. It IS your transformation.
So yeah, follow your North Star. You glowing beneath it is what happens when you stop hiding from yourself long enough to write it down—and keep writing, draft after draft, until the metamorphosis is complete.
Only then do you get your wings.
Only then can you fly.