EMPOWER

H.E.R. DEFINITION
To EMPOWER, in the H.E.R. sense, is not to build a new version of yourself out of nothing. It is to go back for the parts of you that were taken, a little at a time, and to take them back the same way, one piece at a time. It is dancing loud in a room again, and this time, staying.

Decades ago, at a company party, I was dancing. Loud. Silly. Alive. I looked up toward the door and caught him watching me - irritated. That became the ongoing theme over the years: you're just trying to get attention. So, little by little, I dimmed it. A little less laughing. A little less room taken up. I told myself I was simply an introvert, that the quieter version was just who I was. Thirty-two years of shrinking myself, one moment at a time, until I barely recognized what I'd given away.

Then the marriage ended. Not gently, and not with any real accounting for what those 32 years had actually held. It felt discarded, all of it, tossed aside in one motion, like none of it had mattered enough to keep. And if someone could throw away 32 years that easily, a question moved in and wouldn't leave: was the entire 32 years a lie? Were the laughs even real? The good times, the memories, the family we built - was any of it true, or had I just been fooling myself the whole time?

I sat with that question for almost a year. Maybe longer.

That question did not just visit for a year and leave. It moved in. For a long time after, I carried it as fact: those 32 years were a lie, and a waste.

This year, I met someone new, briefly. Nothing serious. But he looked at me, silly and loud and all, and he liked exactly what he saw. No irritation. No sighing. Just interest. It caught me off guard how much that shifted something in me, after carrying that lie and waste story for so long. I remember thinking, this is who I have always been. I did not become this. I just stopped hiding it.

Looking back now, I understand something I could not see while I was living it. That irritation on the dance floor decades ago, and every time after that when I heard you're just trying to get attention, none of that was ever really about me. I have come to believe it was about him. About what it stirred up in him to watch a woman enjoy herself, take up space, be loud and unbothered in a room. I think now it was jealousy wearing the costume of criticism. But at the time, I did not have that language. I just had the message, over and over, that the fullest version of me was too much. So I made myself less.

For a while, there were times I would be talking to my daughter and catch myself saying, "me and your dad used to..." and feel a strange shame creep in, like the memory needed permission it did not have anymore. Like I was not allowed to bring up the good parts now that the marriage was over. That went on for a while.

Then, within the last year, closer to that same stretch of time as meeting someone new, something shifted. I would say it again, "me and your dad used to..." and instead of the old sting, instead of shying away from the memory like it was something to be ashamed of, I found myself laughing. Actually laughing. That was new. And it kept happening. The more I let myself reference those good times out loud, the less power the ending of the marriage had over the truth of what happened inside it.

That is when it hit me. Even if he was living a lie for those 32 years, I was not. The laughter was mine. The good times were mine. I made them. He was there, he contributed, sure. But I am the one who brings the fun into a room. I always have been. These are my memories. This is my life. He cannot reach back through time and take that from me, no matter how the marriage ended.

So I started paying closer attention to who I actually am outside of that marriage. I had spent years telling people I was an introvert, and honestly, half of them never believed me. Now I know why. A few weeks ago I went to a concert alone. I ended up talking to the guy next to me, the couple in front of me, the woman on my other side. I stayed for the second show and made a new friend in the seat beside me. Sitting there, mid conversation with a stranger, I thought, this is who I am. I am supposed to be here. I am supposed to be enjoying people, and I hope they are enjoying me too.

I am not an introvert. I never was. I was a woman who got smaller so someone else could feel bigger, for so long that I started to believe the smaller version was the truth. If you have ever caught yourself performing a quieter, smaller, more agreeable version of who you are, I want you to hear this. That is not you. That is a costume you learned to put on. And you are allowed to take it off.

EMPOWER does not mean becoming someone new. For me, it meant going back for the parts of myself I left behind on a dance floor decades ago and picking them back up, one piece at a time. It meant walking into a room again, loud if I want to be, silly if I feel like it, and staying there instead of looking for the door.

Everything I have lived through, every version of me along the way, contributes to the woman standing here now. And she is mine. All of her. The good times, the laughter, the pieces I dimmed and the pieces I have taken back. It is all mine to keep, and none of it was ever his to take.

I still carry that year of doubt with me sometimes. I probably always will. But I no longer let it decide what those 32 years meant. He does not get that power. I do.