Over the past few weeks I have been sharing something with you that I have never named so directly before.

The gap.

The distance between the woman you have been showing up as shaped by the expectations, obligations, and identities life handed you and the woman you were created to be.

And based on what so many of you have shared in the comments, in my DMs, and in the emails you have sent me you feel it.

You know it is there.

What I want to talk about today is what it is actually costing you.

Because I think we underestimate it.

We tell ourselves it is just a feeling. Just restlessness. Just a season.

But the gap is not just uncomfortable. It is expensive.

Here is what I have watched it cost us, in my exam room, in my coaching sessions, and in my own life:

Identity - When the gap stays open long enough, we stop knowing who we are outside of our roles. Not because we changed because we never gave ourselves permission to find out.

Desire - We stop wanting things for ourselves. Not because we have no desires because we have silenced them so consistently that we can no longer hear them. We’ve lost touch with what we actually want.

Possibility - We stop believing a different life is available to us. Not because it isn’t because the gap depletes the neurological resources we need to imagine one. Hope becomes harder to access than it should be.

Purpose - The impact we were put here to have the work that only we can do goes undone. Not because we lack the capacity. Because we never made it back to ourselves to find it.

In her book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, Bronnie Ware says,

“The number one regret of the dying is this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself — not the life others expected of me.”

The women who carried that regret were not so different from you. They just never gave themselves permission to close the gap.

I am not sharing this to frighten you.

I am sharing it because you still have time.