Don’t Let the World Take Your Whimsy

You can grow up without growing dull.

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I genuinely think one of the healthiest things a woman can do for herself is protect her whimsy.

Not her productivity. Not her image. Not the version of herself that has everything colour-coded, emotionally regulated and figured out by twenty-five.

Her whimsy.

That soft little part of her that still believes life can surprise her. The part that believes in luck, timing, alignment, angel numbers, the universe, God or whatever else makes her feel like maybe not everything is entirely out of her hands.

The part that still looks at the world and thinks, despite everything, something good could happen here.

Because somewhere along the way, women are taught that growing up means becoming harder.

More realistic. More practical. Less emotional. Less excited.

We learn to act as if nothing surprises us. Like we don’t care too much. Like we definitely aren’t hoping for something because God forbid someone catches us wanting something badly.

We’re told not to care too much because caring makes you vulnerable. Not to hope too much because disappointment will make you look stupid. Not to get too attached because apparently being unbothered is the ultimate sign of maturity.

But I don’t know when being cynical became the same thing as being wise.

There is nothing childish about still being enchanted by life.

In fact, I think it takes a lot to stay soft after life has given you enough reasons not to be.

Anyone can become bitter after being disappointed enough times.

Staying soft without becoming naive is harder.

And I think women deserve to be a little whimsical.

Go on those silly little café dates with your favourite girls where you spend more money on coffee than necessary and somehow end up yapping for three hours. Get the colourful nails. The unnecessarily long ones that make typing slightly inconvenient but make you stare at your own hands every ten minutes. Colour your hair. Get the tattoo you’ve been thinking about for three years. Get another piercing. Wear rhinestones on a random Tuesday.

Dress up even when you’re technically just going to the mall.

Life is already serious enough.

You don’t need to make yourself boring just to prove that you’re an adult.

Take that solo trip.

Go somewhere you’ve never been before and figure it out as you go. Travel alone at least once if that’s something you’ve always wanted to do. Eat by yourself. Sit in a café and people-watch. Walk around a new city with no real plan.

There is something lovely about finding out that you can have a beautiful day without needing someone else there to make it feel important.

And while we’re at it, spend your own money.

Buy the bag if you really want the bag. Buy the makeup. Buy the overpriced coffee. Or spend all of it on books and then sit on the floor wondering where you’re supposed to keep them because apparently buying books and owning bookshelves are two completely different hobbies.

Go thrifting.

Buy something slightly weird.

Make it work anyway.

Let yourself have things simply because they make you happy.

I’ve always loved the idea of making ordinary life feel a little more like something out of a film.

Not because I want my life to be perfect.

I just think ordinary days deserve a little romance too.

Take pictures of random things. Have playlists for extremely specific moods. Make Pinterest boards for versions of your life that haven’t happened yet. Save places you want to visit. Keep a list of cafés you want to try. Buy the perfume because you want to smell like the version of yourself you’ve been imagining.

I love the idea of keeping a list of things you want to experience.

Places you want to see. Homes you want to live in. Cafés you want to visit. Things you want to own. Moments you hope somehow find their way into your life.

Sometimes you add something to it and then immediately go back to answering emails or doing laundry because, unfortunately, the whimsical woman still has bills to pay.

But I like knowing that those dreams are sitting there.

Waiting.

Not for someone to come and give them to me.

Just waiting for me to find my way towards them slowly.

And that’s another thing I wish more women were encouraged to do:

Want things.

Want the big girl job. Want the promotion. Want the money. Want independence. Want to climb the corporate ladder and absolutely slay while doing it.

There is nothing wrong with ambition.

There is nothing wrong with wanting your own money and your own name attached to your achievements.

And then, if the corporate world stops feeling like home, leave and do something completely different.

Open that bookstore.

That flower shop.

That tiny café with the mismatched chairs.

That bakery you’ve been romanticising since you were twenty-two.

Make it your own.

Put your favourite books on the shelves. Play music you actually like. Decorate it with things that make you happy. Build the kind of place where someone walks in having the worst day of their life and somehow leaves feeling a little better.

Or don’t open anything.

Maybe you just want a quiet job, a nice apartment and enough money to buy expensive candles without feeling guilty.

That’s fine too.

I think that’s the beauty of being a woman who is finally learning to build her own life.

You get to decide what a good life looks like to you. It could be a career you’re proud of, a business you’ve built yourself, travelling every few months. It could even be a quiet life that nobody on Instagram would be particularly impressed by.

It still counts.

Get your own home if that’s your dream.

Build it slowly. Choose each piece with care. Take forever to choose a couch. Fill your shelves with books. Put too many plants near the window. Buy the stupid lamp you fell in love with even though everyone told you it wouldn’t match anything.

Your home doesn’t need to look perfect.

It just needs to feel like you.

Make yourself feel at home with yourself too.

Fall in love with your best friends. Properly. Loudly.

Tell them you love them. Plan trips together. Go on girls’ nights and take thirty blurry photos you’ll look at years later and immediately remember exactly how happy you were.

Let friendship be one of the great loves of your life.

And fall in love with yourself in a healthier way.

Learn how to enjoy your own company. Take yourself out. Sit in a café alone with a book and stop worrying that people are looking at you because I promise you, they’re probably busy having their own main character moment.

Eat alone.

Go to the movies.

Buy yourself flowers.

Become someone you feel safe being with.

And if you do fall in love with someone, fall in love with someone who doesn’t make you feel like you have to become less of yourself to be loved.

Don’t fall for the person who makes you quieter, smaller or easier to handle.

Don’t fall for someone who looks at your excitement like it’s embarrassing, your emotions like they’re inconvenient or your weirdness like something that needs to be fixed.

And please, don’t spend your life trying to convince someone that you’re not too much when the right person would probably just think, finally, someone as weird as me.

Fall for someone who feels like home, but never makes you feel confined.

The kind of person you can come back to after a long day without having to put on a different version of yourself at the door. You can have your loud days and your quiet ones, your ridiculous ideas and your moments when you don’t have much to say, and none of it feels like too much.

They cheer when you get the job. They book the trip with you. They listen to you ramble about things they don’t fully understand and somehow remember the details because they know they matter to you❤

Your dreams don’t scare them. Your independence doesn’t make them wonder where they fit into your life. They don’t need to be the center of everything you do.

They simply fit.

Honestly, Dua Lipa said it better than I ever could: training season’s over.

Manifest it. Chant it. Put it on a vision board. Whatever works for you.

But don’t ever let a man convince you that love requires you to give up the life you were building for yourself.

Love should fit into your life.

It should give you more places to go, more things to laugh about, more memories to make.

It shouldn’t make your world smaller.

You were a whole person before you met him.

Please stay one after.

Don’t be ashamed of having feelings either.

Cry when something hurts. Laugh loudly enough that people turn around. Be dramatic when the situation calls for it. Be emotional. Be weird.

Have very specific opinions about fictional characters and unnecessarily strong feelings about things other people consider small.

Let people think you’re strange.

Honestly, they’ll survive.

I spent a lot of time thinking that being taken seriously meant becoming easier to digest.

More composed. More practical. More polished around the edges.

But I don’t want to spend my entire life sanding myself down so other people can feel comfortable around me.

I don’t want to look back one day and realise I spent my twenties trying so hard to become the kind of woman everyone could understand that I forgot to actually enjoy being her.

I want stories.

I want to look back and feel like I was actually there for my own life. Not constantly worrying about whether I was doing enough, becoming enough or making the right choices. Just living it. Making mistakes. Changing my mind. Loving people. Trying things. Letting some days be completely ordinary and letting others surprise me.

I don’t need every decision to make sense in hindsight. I just don’t want fear to make all of them for me.

I don’t think growing up means losing the girl you were. I think it means giving her a little more freedom.

You can be responsible without becoming boring. You can be careful without becoming closed off. You can know life is hard and still leave room for it to be beautiful.

That’s the part I want to hold on to.

The little spark.

Maybe that’s what whimsy really is.

Not believing that everything will be perfect.

Just leaving a little room for life to surprise you. For a good day you didn’t plan, a place you didn’t expect to love, or a version of yourself you haven’t grown into yet.

I think we spend so much of adulthood trying to have everything figured out that we forget how nice it is to leave a little room for the unknown.

Your life won’t always look exactly the way you imagined it would. That’s okay. Some of the best parts might be things you haven’t thought to wish for yet.

The world will give you enough reasons to become cynical on its own. You don’t have to help it.

Keep the ridiculous outfit. Keep the stupid Pinterest board. Keep wanting things. Keep falling in love with your friends, with yourself, with the life you’re slowly making.

Be practical when you need to be, but don’t become so practical that you forget how to be enchanted.

The world is already harsh enough on women.

Your life doesn’t have to be.

So don’t let the world take your whimsy just because it lost its own.