November Rain

PART 3/10 THE WOMEN WHO RAISED ME WITHOUT MEANING TO

This piece was written under the emotional influence of “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses. Not because it mirrors this story literally, but because some songs feel like memory. Like time passing. Like becoming. Like looking back at old versions of yourself with softer eyes and realizing they were trying their best. Listen while reading if you want the ache of growing up, the tenderness of remembering, and the strange beauty of becoming the woman you were always on your way to. Actually press play before reading… trust me on this one. 😉

There are women who raise you without ever meaning to.

Not with speeches. Not with grand wisdom delivered over coffee like they knew exactly what they were doing. I mean the quieter kind. The accidental kind. The women who leave fingerprints on your life so slowly that one day, somewhere in the middle of adulthood, while putting on face cream or standing in a grocery store parking lot wondering why life feels so complicated, a memory flashes through your mind and you think: Oh. That’s where I got that.

I think we misunderstand becoming. We talk about growth like it arrives with certainty. Like one day you wake up, drink enough water, heal enough trauma, survive enough disappointment, and suddenly become a woman who knows exactly who she is. But my experience has felt less like certainty and more like wandering. Like trying on versions of myself. Like wondering if I am too much and then realizing maybe “too much” is simply what happens when someone feels deeply in a world obsessed with appearing fine.

Maybe that wondering came honestly.

I come from women.

My grandma on my dad’s side had a complicated relationship with punctuality. Meaning: she was late to everything and somehow still made it feel glamorous. Every family gathering, every church service, every lunch involved lipstick in the car and the collective understanding that she would arrive when she arrived. As a kid, I thought the lesson was inconvenience. As an adult, I think she accidentally taught me something much better: life does not require polish before participation. Hair half done. Running behind. Lipstick in the mirror. Still showing up. Somewhere between the lateness and the ritual, she handed me a permission slip I would not understand until much later: you are allowed to arrive unfinished.

My grandma on my mom’s side taught something entirely different. She was the queen of crafts. Seasonal crafts. Holiday crafts. Tuesday afternoon because why not crafts. There was always an invitation. Come over. Come sit. Come make something. Even into adulthood, she kept inviting us in. At the time, I thought she was teaching us how to glue fake leaves onto things and somehow call it décor. Looking back, I think she was teaching belonging. Because love, I am learning, often hides in ordinary rituals. A chair waiting for you. Someone making space. Hands busy beside yours. Safety disguised as routine.

My mom taught me resilience, though I doubt she ever called it that. She cooked, worked, cared for people, stretched time, stretched money, stretched herself. Not glamorous. Not inspirational quote worthy. Just steady. Real. Practical love. Before I ever understood confidence, I watched competence live inside a woman. I watched someone keep showing up because life required it.

And then there were the women who quietly filled gaps.

There was a woman at church growing up who took me out. Lunch dates. Movie dates. Cookie baking afternoons. Bookstore trips where I could wander and wonder and feel interesting simply because someone slowed down long enough to notice me. At the time it just felt fun. Now I understand something deeper happened there. She gave me attention without agenda. Time without obligation. Presence. Not because my mom failed me, but because women, at their best, quietly mother what is needed.

Then there was my best friend’s mom. The mom. The one who picked us up, dropped us off, drove us to the mall, the movies, the water park, all the places we begged to go. The one who stood in the kitchen making dinner and casually asked questions about our day as though the details of teenage life mattered. Which, if you have ever been a teenage girl, you know mattered almost embarrassingly much. She listened. She noticed. She created the kind of ordinary steadiness that feels invisible until you realize how rare it was.

Then came friendships. The high school kind. The ones who feel like oxygen. The ones who become your whole world because belonging at sixteen feels less optional and more like survival. The friends you show up for because they showed up for you. The ones who help shape your identity before you even realize identity is being shaped.

And maybe that is where this gets complicated.

Because for years I confused confidence with performance.

I had personality. Volume. Charm. Opinions. I could walk into a room and talk to almost anyone and convince myself I knew exactly who I was. But rooted? Certain? Secure? Not exactly.

At eighteen, I sold Mary Kay for roughly six minutes and with the confidence of someone who had absolutely no business teaching women skincare. I remember hosting a party for a friend and confidently telling women to put mascara on before eyeshadow. Wet mascara. Powder shadow. Tiny cosmetic tragedy. If you wear makeup, I know you twitched.

At the time, I didn’t know enough to know what I didn’t know. But please, be 18, You know everything. And 44 year olds are not wise when you’re 22.

That Mary Kay memory came back recently while putting on face cream. Twenty years disappeared and suddenly there she was again, younger me trying very hard to become somebody. Funny how memory works. You can pass the same object a hundred times and nothing happens. Then one random day, light hits the negative just right.

That is the only way I know how to explain memory now.

Like photographs waiting in the dark.

Like pieces of ourselves tucked away until something ordinary flashes light through them and suddenly we see them again, but differently.

I do not think those moments are random anymore. I think life, or God, or grace, quietly says: Look again.

Not to cringe.

Not to shame yourself.

To understand.

Because when I look back now, I do not see a confident girl. I see longing. I see someone trying very hard to become. Someone mistaking boldness for rootedness. Noise for knowing herself. Performance for identity. A girl trying on versions of herself because she had not yet learned that confidence grows slowly, often in the company of people who hand us small pieces of ourselves before we know what to do with them.

Funny how age changes the questions.

When we are young, we ask: Who am I supposed to become?

When we get older, we quietly start asking: What was already planted in me all along?

The humor. The grit. The curiosity. The softness. The stubbornness. The instinct to care. The courage to ask questions. The ability to keep showing up unfinished.

Maybe becoming is not inventing yourself after all.

Maybe it is excavation.

Maybe the women who raised us were never teaching us who to become.

Maybe they were quietly handing us pieces of ourselves all along.

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