Sugar Words

There are years that give, and then there are years that teach.
For me, 2025 was the latter.

Main lesson: Saying yes does not always mean happiness, but it unveils something greater.

More than anything, it reminded me that when life offers you the chance to dream, to take a big step, to put skin in the game, you take it. Even when your hands are shaking. Saying yes does not guarantee happiness. But it does offer something sturdier – fulfilment. And the unglamorous clarity that comes from knowing, through experience, what is for you, and what you are for.

For a long time, I believed that trying new things, saying yes to my big, unruly, oversized dreams that do not fit into my current life, would make me happy. Or that it would turn me into someone fearless. Untouchable. Immune to disappointment. I imagined myself moving through life with my chest out, a smile that reached my eyes, twirling for no reason, plucking a flower off the ground and tucking it into my hair. A happy 90s cartoon character, finally unlocked.

What I learned instead, through trying in life, career, and relationships, is that trying is not a shortcut to joy; it is a confrontation. A slow, sometimes brutal process of self-exploration. And like any real exploration, there are rivers filled with piranhas, forests that briefly feel like magic, long stretches of heat and thirst, and stormy waters for which you have to build boats at the drop of a hat. 

For me, that meant relearning myself from the ground up. Identifying my non-negotiables. Standing face to face with the thing I avoid most (ahem), hard truths about our world. Crying more than I expected. Wondering, at my lowest points, whether all this effort was even worth it. That reckoning usually arrives when you are attached to a glossy fantasy of how giving something a shot will turn your life into a lights-camera-action montage (spoiler: it doesn’t, not immediately at least).

That was when a more uncomfortable question surfaced. If I let go of the delusion, will fear take over? Is it not that belief, however irrational, that gives me the courage to chase what I want even when the odds feel stacked, and the room feels hostile? Without it, how do I find the nerve to say what I usually swallow, to ask for things that might sound laughable, to rise onto my tiptoes and try to claim space at tables I have only watched from a distance, to speak about what I want to build with conviction instead of caveats? How does that courage survive current reality?

Well, that’s when a light from the sky fell upon me and told me (haha I wish, it actually took me a year and probably will need more) to learn that – I should not try for the outcome, rather for the person “trying” forces me to become.

Trying introduces me to my many different versions. The workaholic. The needy friend. The scrappy builder. The over-communicator. The one who cannot name what she feels. The toxic one. The encourager. The woman who moves cities and roots herself in unfamiliar soil. The one who hurts others. The one who lets her boundaries blur. The one who loves recklessly. The one who can speak to twenty strangers in a week. And the one who keeps showing up.

I try because it shows me that most limits are not fixed. They are learned, rehearsed, and enforced by me. It shows me how much duality I carry. Every attempt, every risk, every conversation uncovers another layer. And that awareness gives me something more powerful than confidence. Choice. And that discovery allows me to shape who I want to be, not based on fear or perceived capability, but because I choose to. So whatever I choose, I become because there is infinte versions of me.

Trying uncovers that I am not at the mercy of this big, beautiful, cruel, and funny life. I get to participate in shaping it.

Through exploration, elimination, and expression, I begin to experience myself fully. The light and the dark. The softness and the sharp edges. The kindness and the wrath. Trying helps me see which parts of me serve me, which ones have been running the show from the backstage, which ones I neglect, which ones I need to celebrate more and accept them all. 

So say yes, you might not achieve what you wanted, but you will gain a version of you that you thought did not exist. And trying is the only way to find her.

P.S I now have a Substack.