Lately, I’ve been learning a lesson I didn’t expect to stumble into: the quiet, heavy power of expectation.
When I released my first children’s book, I carried so much hope. Hope that people would see the heart behind the pages, hope that they would rally behind me, hope that support would just naturally flow in because this dream meant so much to me. But when that didn’t happen in the way I imagined, disappointment crept in quickly… followed by its close companions: self-doubt, overthinking, and a surprising amount of negativity.
It wasn’t about the sales. It was about the story I told myself when the support looked different than I had envisioned. I began questioning my worth, my talent, even the purpose behind writing in the first place. It was a spiral I didn’t see coming.
It was literally yesterday when I sat with those feelings long enough to realize something incredibly important: I set myself up for this exact moment. I built expectations and hopes that relied entirely on other people’s responses, and that’s not fair; to them or to me. It puts my sense of worth in someone else’s hands.
But here’s the lesson I’m holding onto now:
My value cannot be tied to other people’s actions.
Support can be quiet, slow, or invisible. Dreams can take time to bloom. And expectations; especially those we don’t say aloud, can become heavy if we let them.
I’m learning to celebrate the courage it took to create something. I’m learning to trust that my work will find the people who need it. I’m learning to shift from “Why aren’t they…?” to “Look what I did.”
It’s a humbling skill, this practice of detaching from outcomes and rooting myself in the joy of creating. But it’s one I’m grateful to be building, even if it came wrapped in disappointment first.
The Transforming Teacher 