The Path is Where Your Feet Are 🌞👣

I’m a few days out from my 27th birthday. So, naturally, in the spirit of growth, and my deep-seated maturity, I started the celebration the only logical way: crying to a sappy Pixar movie ( you’re never too old to reap the benefits of either🤭).

I watched Inside Out 2 and found familiarity in ways I wasn’t ready for. (*Possible spoilers ahead*) The way anxiety sneaks in—- first to our decision making and then into our sense of self— not as a villain but as that part of you that just desperately wants everything to go right… and in its quest, leaves behind one resounding message: I’m not good enough.  

When did that message find a home in me? I honestly don’t know if I ever didn’t have it. It was definitely earlier than thirteen, though it definitely took on new shape in high school. The result was always the same: this persistent needling that my sense of self–my worth—was something fragile. Something I had to earn the right to keep together.

I’ve been trying to challenge that belief privately for years but, as I enter my late twenties, I feel more ready to shake it off—more loudly, brashly—than ever before.

---

It’s always been easier for me to believe in other people’s ability than than to believe in my own. People I love—I can see their paths so clearly. I cheer for them. I hold faith on their behalf. But when it comes to me? I start grasping for formulas. The “right” way. The “right” choice. The perfectly intuitive, divinely inspired, no-regrets route.

But life doesn’t unfold that way. No matter how closely you listen, no matter how tapped in you think you are—detours happen. Feelings change. Dreams shift. And somehow, even after all the self-work, that still feels like failure.

Somewhere along the way, it clicked for me:

If I could just do it right—say the right thing, work hard enough, be disciplined enough, dedicated enough—then I’d finally feel secure. Finally feel like myself.

But every time I arrived at what I thought was the destination… it never felt like I’d pictured. And that threw me.

If the outcomes didn’t match the effort—if they didn’t feel like relief, or clarity, or belonging—then where was my path? What had I actually been working toward?

Law school was supposed to be my “right choice.” It checked all the boxes. It made sense. It gave me something to point to when the rest of my life felt blurry. But I knew, even early on, that I couldn’t commit my life to a system I didn’t believe in. And still—I clung to it. Because walking away felt like walking into the unknown with no map, no backup plan, no proof that I wasn’t just quitting.

I didn’t know how to trust the step without the destination. I kept hoping someone, somewhere, would tell me what to do. And the silence I felt when no answer came? It made me think I’d missed something. That I’d failed at discerning the “right” thing. That if I were more faithful, more in tune, more…whatever—I’d have known.

But maybe that’s the trap. This belief that certainty is the reward for being good enough. That clarity is earned. Maybe I was never meant to decode a path. Maybe I was meant to make one.

The truth was: I didn’t know what to choose. Not consciously. Not in a way I could act on. And I can’t know the unknown. No one can.

Still, I treated every decision like a tightrope. One step off-center and it’s all over. One direction wasn’t “spiritual enough.” The other wasn’t “realistic enough.” I worried if I stayed, I’d be betraying myself and blocking my path. I worried if I left, it meant I didn’t have faith—that I could convince myself of anything to get out of following through. I wondered if I was someone who’d never finish anything—someone who always fled in fear.

It felt like failure no matter what.

But what if there was never a tightrope at all? What if there’s no one right thing? What if the path isn’t something you follow—but something you co-create? What if each step is just… another step?

Maybe the path is a series of loops. Maybe it’s steep hills and strange detours. Maybe there’s no forward or back—just this moment, and then the next.

And maybe the yellow brick road was never yellow to begin with. (if you know me, you know I have personal beef with Ms. G(a)linda the “Good” Witch 😾, but that’s another post for another day. 😆)

The path wasn’t made of gold; the bricks were never yellow. That golden glow you’re seeing? It’s coming from you. You are your own light source. The path only becomes illuminated— golden because you’re walking on it.

So maybe the story in your head says you have to finish undergrad in four years. Fall in love by 25. Become the first doctor in your family. Know your purpose by 30. But if you don’t? If it takes you longer? If you leave or change your mind or reroute completely?

That’s not failure. That’s texture. That’s story.

Where would your feet take you if you weren’t using your path to prove anything? If you didn’t need your choices to be evidence of worthiness? What if life isn’t about finding the one right step—but learning, through experience, the rhythm and pace of your own story?

If I’m being honest, uncertainty still terrifies me. As a late bloomer, I’ve never really felt like my process was on the same timeline as everyone else. Things that seem natural to other people feel so slow to me, it’s like no movement at all. And then—suddenly, disorientingly—I wake up in a new reality, and my mind still thinks I’m in the before—the before I had always been in.

But the ebbs and flows of life are teaching me that the fastest way to your destination is often slow. The most aligned action is usually flow. And force? Force just creates resistance—resistance that isn’t always necessary. A different outcome doesn’t always mean a worse one. There is life beyond our narrow definitions of success. There is fertile ground to walk on, well beyond the shaky wires of the tightrope.

So I guess I’m writing this to say (to myself as much as you): I know it’s not easy. But maybe it could be a bit easier if we were open to trust. Don’t force your feet in the direction you think they should go. Let them land where they do, and honor that landing.

There is no yellow brick road to follow. There is only the light entrusted to you—your sense of self. And your job, now and always, is to cradle it. To nurture it.

And wherever your feet land as you nurture that light that’s been entrusted to you—
as it radiates—
becomes the path. The path is where your feet are 

---

For my upcoming 27th year and beyond, I hope this sentiment (that the path is where your feet are, it emerges naturally as you live your truth instead of being some tool to earn your way onto or prove your worth) rings deliciously true for me— as true as I know it is for you, the one reading this.

+ special shout out to my writing buddy and fellow Aunt Wendy watcher (How YOU dzoin 💅🏾🤭🫶🏾) for encouraging me to push past the emotionally avoidant writer’s block and put this post out there. It’s vulnerable, but writing this blog—capturing the uncertainty of how I feel in the present, how I’ve felt for most of my twenties, and the glimmers of certainty in how I hope to feel—is my own exercise in being where I am now. In embracing the unknown. In standing in my process (and trusting enough to share it—EEEK). Instead of running from it.