Life on My Terms

There was a time when my voice was loud. In my younger years, my confidence filled rooms. I carried my opinions like torches that were bright, sharp, imposing. I confidently asserted my limited knowledge, often reinforcing ideas that make me cringe today. But life has a way of tempering us. Not diminishing, but refining. Over time, my fire settled into something steadier and more grounded. Quiet, but far more powerful. These days, I don’t need to announce my direction. I simply move and let my actions speak with more authority than any words ever could.

That shift didn’t happen randomly. Throughout my life, people rarely confronted me outright, but their doubts always presented in their own way - through the underhanded comments, the passive questions, the raised eyebrows, the disapproving looks, that all plainly said, “Why would you choose that?” People didn’t have to tell me they didn't understand. Their confusion and disapproval was written all over their faces and their slow retreat.

My Unapologetic Scholar's Heart

When I stepped into graduate-level history, the reaction wasn’t celebration. It was confusion. A mid-life scholar? A woman diving into the humanities when everyone else insists business degrees are the only “sensible” option? I didn’t need anyone to say it out loud; the message was in the silence.

But what the world condemned as frivolous, I found life-giving. I love being a scholar. I love the discipline of learning—the reading, the questions, the patterns, the immersion in centuries of human experience, the challenge to look at facts and interpretations critically. I love the way history sharpens my understanding of power and human behavior, but also the way it nourishes me.

Giving myself permission to pursue something so aligned with my deepest longings despite it being labeled useless or indulgent was an act of resistance in itself. It wasn’t a rebellion against a single person. It was defiance against the idea that curiosity must justify itself to capitalism.

Leaving a Life I Loved

And when I left the United States, it wasn’t because I was running from failure or stagnation. I wasn’t escaping a life that had gone wrong. In truth, I was leaving a life that had gone very right. I had a home I adored, a garden that felt enchanted, animals who were family to me, a partner I had just married, financial stability, and a community that held me. I was thriving. Everything I had worked for was finally in place.

But I also saw the landscape shifting. I saw the political and social atmosphere straining toward instability, long before it cracked open. My studies made the patterns unmistakable. My intuition, honed from a lifetime of navigating upheaval, told me the world I loved was about to transform, and that remaining where I was would eventually cost me more than leaving.

Leaving was not a rejection of my life. It was grieving foresight. It was loving something so deeply that I refused to let denial be the way I lost it.

The Discipline of Trusting My Own Sight

I used to believe courage was something to be shouted. Now I know courage is often something you do unassumingly. It is trusting your own sight when no one else sees what you see. It is walking away from comfort not because you want less, but because you understand what the care of your future self demands.

People often assume bold moves come from dissatisfaction. Mine came from clarity. From understanding that safety sometimes requires motion. From knowing that surviving the future means positioning yourself ahead of it. And yes, making that choice cost me dearly. I will live with the grief of that departure every day. But grief does not mean regret. It simply means a had a life I loved deeply.

Defiance as Creation

One truth my life keeps teaching me is that not all defiance is destructive. Sometimes it is deeply creative. It is choosing the path that honors your own knowing, even when others disapprove or whisper doubts. It is stepping into the unknown not because you are fearless, but because you are unapologetically committed to listening to your own heart.

My resistance to blind conformity has shifted shapes over the years. It used to roar. Now it moves. Quietly, deliberately, strategically. And every so-called impractical choice—every investment, every relocation, every risk—has led me to a life filled with treasure, love, and unexpected support woven into the loss.

If my younger self was fire, my current self is ember and stone: steady, enduring, capable of reshaping my world without spectacle. And every time I’ve trusted my intuitive evolution, it has carried me toward a life more honest and expansive than anything doubt ever tried to confine me to.

Moral of the story: don't let them tell you how to live!