Stop being quiet about who you are.

{{ subscriber.first_name }}, For today's letter, I actually did something different. I fully voice noted this, 🎧 listen on Spotify / Apple, as it was recorded instead of written. (The full letter #33 is in the audio)

I'm speaking directly from the heart after a deep meditation and a good night's sleep. Oh my God, I finally got some good fucking sleep.

I chose not to edit this or run it through Claude for proofreading, and I'm giving it to you raw.

This season, matter of fact, this year, has been full of pivots, transformation, change, and pattern-breaking. And in the midst of all of that change and self-transformation, we are not giving ourselves enough flowers, enough grace, or enough time to sit in this in between.

We're trying to rush the process. We're trying to force our way to some version of becoming.

And I'm saying this to you because I saw a TikTok from a creator that said she's in the alleyway between her old self and her new self, and that alleyway is ghetto. She's getting jumped. She is fighting for her life.

And that was so real that I cackled and immediately thought about all the people that are in this season of transformation, that are loving themselves, that are breaking patterns, that are breaking habits, that are trying to do better, but are measuring themselves against someone else's completion and not giving themselves the flowers that they deserve.

And while I talk about how powerful and magical the in between is, it's also very much brutal.

You are forming a new identity while existing in environments that are static.

And in that place of figuring out who we are and what we want in this season of life, we become quiet. But in that quiet, we doubt ourselves, and we forget who the fuck we actually are.

So hear me please, because it's really important that someone tells you this.

If you decided to change your environment, to quit the job, to move to a new city, to leave the relationship and figure out who you are and who you want to become while you're still carrying all the things that you're carrying, congratulations. 👏🏽

Congratulations.

I know that people are not as supportive as they need to be. You probably get a mix of sympathy, confusion, doubt, and even people that want to stay away because they think that your becoming is somehow cooties.

Most people clap at the arrival. We need to clap at endings.

We need to clap for the people who are brave enough to change, to leave, to exit, to try again.

When you are in adulthood, there's this fucking stigma that makes you feel like you need to have everything in order. Every video on social media is constantly trying to tell you how to perfect things. It's constantly trying to show you how to optimize.

And listen, as somebody who builds workshops for female founders, I understand all about the language of optimization and making sure that you take things off your plate so that you have more time to be human.

But there is this message on social media, every time you open the app, you feel like you're behind. You feel like you have to run towards some ideal of perfection, of adulthood.

Finances have to be 100% in order. Business has to be 100% profitable and scalable. Relationships have to be perfect and intact. Friendships all have to be hot, powerful, and sexy.

When can we just allow the messiness of human evolution, of our life, of our relationships, of our finances, of our becoming to also have a seat at the table with all the expectations?

Humans were raised on patterns, systems, and categories, and when you break that pattern, when you decide to be the paradigm shift and advocate against systems, and when you realize that you can no longer squeeze yourself into a category, it's going to feel lonely.

Growth is praised, but it can feel lonely.

And this is my message to you: Don't quiet yourself on your way to your reinvention. Stop being quiet about who you are. Just because you are in the middle of some type of transformation, just because you're in the middle of some kind of change, doesn't take away from your magic and from your brilliance.

Some of you are burnt out, and you're adding more to your plate so you can feel something.

But the thing that you need to feel will only happen when you get quiet with yourself, but not quiet about who the fuck you are.

There's a distinction, and my job today is to remind you of that distinction.

And if you have been watching the news and everything that has been going on this month, there's one thing that we could all agree on.

Humans need more grace.

We need to be kinder to each other.

We have no idea what each one of us are going through.

And so my message for you is that I hope you stop being quiet about how incredibly powerful you are, that you let yourself be seen, that you let yourself be loved even in the season of not knowing what the fuck is up.

That doesn't take away from your magic, from your brilliance, from your power.

And thank you for listening, for reading, for telling me what moved you, for joining the things that I'm building, because I'm building them so that we erase this fucking feeling of needing to be perfect all the time, and instead allow ourselves to unfold with grace and figure out who we are while we're building the things that we desire to build in this life.

I hope you always remember that if you are in the season of the in-between, you're in the most magical place that you could exist in.

Don't waste this opportunity by worrying about what other people think about you. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Feel proud, because there's no fucking way you would have gotten here if you didn't actually love and believe in yourself.

Give yourself the opportunity to see yourself out loud, to live life out loud, to believe in your dreams out loud, to try again, even if it means falling on your fucking face. Who cares? I don't want you to get to the end of your life and look back and be like, "Damn, I didn't go all in." I want you to go all in.

Stop being quiet about who you are.

Until the next letter,
Vanessa

P.S. This letter was a mixture of reflection and letter 33. (full letter in the audio)

P.P.S. join me for the AI workshop. There's so much information and courses out there that teach you to hand over your IP, the things that make you magical. And I want to show you how to leverage AI while you retain the thing that makes you and your brand unmistakably you. This is not about perfection. This is about inviting ease.

​Vanessa Santos