You are old enough for people to expect you to know what you’re doing, but young enough to still be figuring out who you are.

People ask questions like, “What are you doing next?” or “What’s your five-year plan?” as if life should come with a calendar already filled in.

And sometimes, I don’t have an answer.

I used to think that meant I was behind.

Now, I’m starting to realize that maybe I’m just becoming.

I’m learning that I can want one thing today and discover something completely different tomorrow. I can have dreams that change. I can start something and realize it isn’t for me. I can be excited about my future and still be scared of it.

None of that means I’m failing.

It means I’m human.

There are so many versions of myself that I’ve had to say goodbye to.

The girl who thought she had to have everything figured out.

The girl who thought being strong meant never admitting she was tired.

The girl who believed that if something didn’t work out, it meant she wasn’t good enough.

The girl who thought her past was going to determine her entire future.

I feel differently now.

I’m beginning to understand that my past can explain parts of me without owning me.

I can acknowledge everything I’ve been through without letting it become the only story I tell about myself.

And maybe that is what growing up really is.

Not suddenly having all the answers.

Maybe it’s learning how to sit with the questions.

Right now, I’m figuring out work, school, relationships, my dreams, my writing, and the kind of woman I want to become.

Some days I feel incredibly confident.

Other days, I feel like I’m making everything up as I go.

But honestly?

I probably am.

And I think that’s okay.

We put so much pressure on ourselves to have the perfect career, relationship, body, home, life.

Social media makes it even harder because we’re constantly watching people announce their engagements, graduate from college, buy houses, start businesses, travel the world, and seemingly have everything together.

It’s easy to look at someone else’s life and feel like you’re late to your own.

But we never see the entire story.

We see the announcement.

We don’t see the uncertainty that came before it.

We see the new job.

We don’t see the rejected applications.

We see the relationship.

We don’t see the conversations, mistakes, and heartbreak that happened behind closed doors.

We see the finished chapter and compare it to the middle of our own.

I don’t want to do that anymore.

I want to enjoy where I am while still working toward where I’m going.

I want to let myself be twenty.

I want to dream without feeling like I need to have a deadline attached to every dream.

I want to write.

I want to learn.

I want to build something of my own.

I want to continue my education.

I want to experience new places.

I want to become someone I’m proud of.

And I want to understand that becoming that person will take time.

I’m still learning things about myself.

Parts of me are still healing.

There are dreams I haven’t even discovered yet.

And instead of being afraid of that, I’m trying to be excited about it.

Because there is something beautiful about not knowing exactly what comes next.

It means there are still surprises waiting for me.

Maybe the life I end up living won’t look anything like the life I imagined when I was younger.

Maybe that’s the point.

I spent so much time thinking life was about becoming the person I thought I was supposed to be.

Now I think it’s about becoming the person I actually am.

And that person is still being written.

So if you’re reading this and you feel behind, I hope you know you’re not.

You don’t have to have everything figured out.

You don’t need to know exactly where you’ll be five years from now.

You’re allowed to change your mind.

You’re allowed to start over.

You’re allowed to outgrow people, places, dreams, and even old versions of yourself.

You’re allowed to take your time.

Life isn’t a race, even though sometimes it feels like everyone else is running past you.

Maybe we’re not supposed to arrive at the same time.

Maybe we’re supposed to take different roads.

Maybe some of us need more time to become who we were always meant to be.

And maybe that’s okay.

I’m still figuring it out.

I don’t have all the answers.

But for the first time, I don’t feel like I need to.

I’m learning to trust that the girl I am today doesn’t need to know everything about the woman I’ll become tomorrow.

She needs to keep going.

And I think I can do that.

Growing up, there were moments when I felt caught between two worlds. I was too Black for some people, not Black enough for others. Being adopted added another layer to that confusion. It left me with questions I didn’t always have words for: where I came from, who I looked like, and where I belonged.

I was raised in a loving white family. They are my family in every way that matters. They showed up for every milestone, every school event, every scraped knee and birthday candle. But love does not automatically answer every question a child has about identity.

One of the first things that made me aware of my difference was my hair.

My sisters had hair that was easy to manage—straight, simple, familiar in a way mine was not. Mine required something different, though I didn’t yet have the language for what that meant. I only knew that it didn’t behave the same way as the people around me.

And when you are a child, different can feel like wrong.

I remember comparing myself to my sisters, wondering why their hair fell one way and mine refused to do the same. I didn’t yet understand texture, curl patterns, or curl routines. I only understood that I was trying to fit into something that wasn’t built for me.

One memory has stayed with me for years.

I would take a baby blanket and place it over my head, letting it fall like long hair. I would look in the mirror and imagine what it would feel like to see myself reflected in the people around me.

At the time, it felt like a game.

Now I understand it differently.

I wasn’t pretending because I wanted a blanket on my head. I was pretending because I wanted to belong to what I saw around me.

That feeling didn’t stay in childhood.

It followed me into school.

Black History Month was one of the few times I felt connected to something larger than myself. I loved learning about Black history—the resilience, the leaders, the stories of people who shaped a world I was still trying to understand my place in. For a short time, those lessons made me feel closer to an identity I didn’t fully grow up inside of.

But school also made me aware of how different I was.

Race and identity discussions often felt simple for other students. They knew where they belonged. I wasn’t always as sure.

Then there were the forms.

White. Black. Asian. Hispanic. Other.

A small box, but never a small decision.

I would hesitate every time. Part of me wanted to choose Black without question. Not to deny the white part of me, but to claim what I felt people already questioned. But doubt would creep in. Would I be wrong? Would someone tell me I didn’t count?

It felt strange that something so small could carry so much weight.

The questions from classmates only added to it.

“Why are your sisters white?”
“Are you adopted?”
“How are you related?”

Most of the time, it wasn’t cruelty. It was curiosity. But curiosity can still make a child feel like an explanation.

Little by little, those moments shaped the questions I carried: where I fit, what I was, and why I didn’t seem to match the expectations people had of me.

So when people eventually began telling me I wasn’t really Black, it wasn’t the beginning of doubt—it was the continuation of it.

They would say that because my mother was white, I didn’t fully count. Or that living in an all-white family somehow erased part of me. I remember thinking, but I am light-skinned—I am still Black.

And yet, I found myself questioning what I already knew.

What hurt most was not just what people said, but what they assumed.

They saw what I didn’t know and treated it as proof of what I wasn’t. They noticed I wasn’t fully connected to Black culture and used that gap as evidence against my identity. What they didn’t see was that I was never given the opportunity to learn many of those things.

I didn’t grow up surrounded by Black relatives teaching traditions or stories. I didn’t have someone to explain the parts of myself I didn’t yet understand. I was trying to figure out who I was while other people were deciding who I wasn’t.

For a long time, I wondered if they were right.

Maybe I wasn’t Black enough.
Maybe I wasn’t white enough.
Maybe I didn’t fully belong anywhere.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized my experience is not unique.

There are many people growing up today who are disconnected from parts of their culture. Some are adopted. Some are mixed-race. Some are raised in families where their racial identity is not reflected in their home environment. Others simply grow up without access to the cultural knowledge people assume they should naturally have.

We often assume culture is passed down automatically. But it isn’t always. It can be interrupted by adoption, separation, migration, silence, or time. Sometimes it is simply never taught.

And yet society often treats culture as something people should already know.

If they don’t, they are questioned. They are excluded. They are told they are not “really” who they say they are.

But identity is not a test.

It is not something a person passes or fails based on how much they were taught growing up.

Race is something people see. Culture is something people learn. And those two things do not always arrive in the same way or at the same time.

For years, I believed my uncertainty meant I was missing something.

Now I understand something different.

Not knowing everything about my culture does not make me less Black. Growing up in a white family does not erase that part of me. Being Black does not erase the fact that I am also white. All of those truths exist at once.

And none of them cancel each other out.

For a long time, I thought I needed permission to understand myself.

Now I know I don’t.

Because maybe the question was never whether I was Black enough.

Maybe the real question is why anyone should have to prove who they are at all.