There are mornings when I still wake up before the alarm, reach for my phone, and for a few seconds forget that my life is no longer the life I used to worry about.
It is such a strange thing, becoming the woman you once begged life to let you become.
Sometimes I wake up and lie there quietly, staring at the ceiling, listening to the soft hum of the house, and I have to remind myself that I am here. That this is not another one of those elaborate fantasies I used to build in my head when the numbers in my account were low and the future felt like a distant country I might never visit.
This is my life.
The bills are paid.
The business is doing well.
There is money in my savings account.
There are no urgent debts waiting to swallow the next payment that comes in.
My son is asleep in the next room.
The house smells faintly of coffee and the plants outside have just been watered.
And nobody is coming to rescue me.
Because I eventually became the person who could rescue herself.
I smile when I think about that.
Not because everything became perfect.
It didn’t.
But because somewhere along the way, the woman who used to sit on her bed calculating rent, groceries, business expenses, school fees and whatever unexpected expense might appear next learned how to build a life that could hold her.
I think about the girl who used to whisper, “I just want enough.”
Enough money.
Enough stability.
Enough peace.
Enough room to breathe.
Enough that one bad month wouldn’t destroy everything.
Enough that I could take my son somewhere simply because I wanted to.
Enough that I could buy something beautiful without immediately wondering what bill that money should have gone toward.
Enough that I could rest without feeling irresponsible.
And now I wake up with more than enough.
Sometimes I still don’t know what to do with that sentence.
More than enough.
It feels almost foreign in my mouth.
I remember when abundance sounded like something other people were born into.
People whose parents owned property. People who had family money. People who could call someone when things went wrong and hear, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
I used to wonder what it would feel like to have that kind of cushion.
To know that rent wasn’t a threat.
To know that a slow business month was simply a slow month.
To know that if my phone broke, I could replace it without first making a spreadsheet.
To know that travelling wasn’t a fantasy I needed to save screenshots for.
To know that my son could want something and I could simply say, “We’ll get it.”
I don’t think I realized how deeply I wanted that feeling.
Not extravagance.
Safety.
Choice.
Room.
And somehow, slowly, imperfectly, I built it.
This morning, I walk barefoot across my bedroom floor.
The curtains move slightly with the breeze coming through the open window. They are new, but every once in a while I still think about the old curtains I had for almost ten years.
I remember them hanging in that old space through different versions of me.
The woman who was still figuring herself out.
The student.
The young mother.
The woman who got a job and thought maybe adulthood would finally make sense.
The woman who left employment and decided she would build something of her own.
The woman who struggled.
The woman who cried.
The woman who wanted love.
The woman who wanted money.
The woman who wanted to disappear for a while.
The woman who kept going.
Those curtains saw all of her.
Sometimes I think objects know our history better than people do.
That old blender does too.
I still have it.
The first thing I bought with my HELB money when I got to campus.
I remember how proud I was.
It wasn’t expensive.
It wasn’t luxurious.
But it was mine.
I bought it with money that represented possibility.
I was young enough to believe life was mostly ahead of me.
I had no idea how complicated it would become.
I had no idea how many times I would have to reinvent myself.
I had no idea how many nights I would cry because someone disappointed me.
How many times I would have to choose myself.
How many times I would have to rebuild my confidence.
How many times I would wonder whether I was making the right decision.
And yet here I am, years later, looking at that same blender and thinking:
“Girl, you really had no idea what you were capable of.”
I laugh.
Because I didn’t.
I genuinely didn’t.
My phone is new now.
It is fast.
The camera is ridiculously good.
I can take a photograph without waiting for the phone to stop lagging or wondering whether it will freeze halfway through what I’m doing.
I remember when my old phone started becoming almost unusable. I remember being annoyed by it and then laughing at myself because there was a time when a new phone would have felt like an irresponsible luxury.
Now I buy one when I need one.
Not because I am trying to prove that I’ve made it.
Because I can.
That’s the difference.
There are so many small things like that now.
The internet is paid.
The VPS hosting for my websites is paid in full.
The business subscriptions are paid.
The machines are mine.
The equipment I once stared at online and thought, “One day,” is sitting in my workspace.
And the workspace itself has changed.
There is order now.
Not the sterile kind.
The kind that comes from knowing where everything belongs.
Products are organized.
Orders are tracked.
Stock is monitored.
Client work has systems.
Invoices go out on time.
Payments are followed up.
I don’t spend entire days wondering whether someone will pay me.
My clients are different now too.
There are people who know what they want.
They send clear briefs.
They respect timelines.
They pay deposits.
They pay balances.
They don’t disappear after asking for twelve revisions.
There are corporate clients now.
Real bulk orders.
Hundreds of products moving through the business at once.
I remember the first corporate order that felt genuinely substantial.
I stared at the figures for a while.
Then I checked them again.
Then again.
And I remember thinking:
“Wait. This is actually my business?”
Yes.
Mine.
The same business I once worried would never make enough during the slow months.
The same business I almost convinced myself was too small.
The same business I kept trying to figure out.
The same business I nearly abandoned emotionally a hundred times even when I never actually walked away.
It grew.
Not because of one magical breakthrough.
Because I kept learning.
I diversified.
I created.
I improved.
I marketed.
I showed up.
I became more comfortable being visible.
I stopped hiding behind the work and started letting people know there was a woman behind it.
I learned that sometimes people aren’t buying because they don’t know you exist.
So I let myself exist loudly.
And eventually, people noticed.
The beautiful thing about success is that sometimes it doesn’t arrive looking dramatic.
Sometimes it looks like opening your banking app and realizing you have savings.
Sometimes it looks like paying your bills without calculating what will remain.
Sometimes it looks like buying groceries and putting the things you want into the trolley instead of mentally removing items because the total is getting uncomfortable.
Sometimes it looks like paying for your son’s school needs and not feeling the familiar panic afterward.
Sometimes it looks like booking a trip.
Sometimes it looks like saying, “Let’s go.”
And actually going.
I remember the first time Adriel and I flew to the coast.
I had imagined it so many times that the actual moment felt strangely surreal.
We were at the airport, and he was excited in that innocent way children get when something feels bigger than ordinary life.
He kept looking around.
The announcements.
The people.
The planes.
Everything.
I looked at him and thought about all the years I had wanted to give him more.
Not necessarily more expensive things.
More experiences.
More memories.
More of the world.
I wanted him to know that life could be beautiful.
That we could wake up one morning and go somewhere.
That the world was not just school, responsibilities, bills and whatever adults were worrying about.
So when we boarded that plane, I sat there looking out the window and quietly said to myself:
“We made it here.”
Not financially.
Not literally.
Something deeper.
We made it out of the version of life where everything had to be postponed.
Mombasa was beautiful.
The heat hit differently when you arrived knowing you had nowhere urgent to be.
No rushing.
No wondering whether the money in your account could carry you through the month.
Just sunlight, ocean air and a child who wanted to see everything.
We walked along the beach.
Ate good food.
Took photographs.
Got sandy.
Laughed at things that weren’t even funny.
I remember watching Adriel run toward the water and feeling something loosen inside me.
I had spent so many years trying to build a future for him.
And suddenly I was standing inside one of the moments I had once imagined.
Later, I went back to the room and sat on the balcony.
The sea was still visible in the distance.
The curtains moved behind me.
And I cried.
Not because I was sad.
Because sometimes gratitude has nowhere else to go.
I thought about the woman who once worried that she wouldn’t be able to give her child a stable life.
I thought about all the nights she wondered whether she was doing enough.
I thought about the moments she felt like she was failing.
And I wanted to reach backward through time and hold her.
“You were doing better than you thought.”
“Keep going.”
“You won’t always feel like this.”
“Your life is going to get bigger.”
We went to Diani too.
Diani felt different.
There was something about waking up close to that particular blue of the ocean and having absolutely nothing to prove.
I remember sitting with my feet in the sand while Adriel played nearby.
The sun was warm.
The breeze smelled like salt.
There was music somewhere in the distance.
I ordered something I wanted without checking the price three times.
And I remember laughing because that tiny action represented years of internal work.
There was a time when spending money on pleasure made me anxious.
Now I understood the difference between recklessness and abundance.
I could enjoy something without sabotaging myself afterward.
I could spend and still have savings.
I could travel and still pay my bills.
I could give and still have enough.
I could rest and still be ambitious.
That was the life I wanted.
Not endless consumption.
Capacity.
Capacity to enjoy.
Capacity to give.
Capacity to rest.
Capacity to grow.
Capacity to handle life when it surprised me.
Watamu came later.
That trip was slower.
Quieter.
I remember waking early and walking outside before everyone else was awake.
The world felt almost untouched.
I watched the sky change.
Pink.
Gold.
Blue.
And I thought about how much of my younger life had been spent waiting for the next thing.
The next payment.
The next client.
The next relationship.
The next opportunity.
The next breakthrough.
The next month.
The next peak season.
The next version of myself.
I had spent so much time trying to get somewhere that I hadn’t realized life was happening while I was on the way.
Now I wanted to be present for the middle.
The ordinary days.
The slow mornings.
The grocery shopping.
The random Tuesday afternoons.
The moments when nothing spectacular was happening.
Because those were the moments I used to wish I could escape.
Now they were the moments I wanted to keep.
And then Zanzibar.
God.
Zanzibar felt like stepping into one of those photographs I used to save on Pinterest.
I remember looking at the water and thinking, “I used to dream about this.”
Not casually.
Really dream.
I used to imagine what it would feel like to stand somewhere beautiful and know I had earned the right to be there.
But somewhere along the way I learned something important.
I never needed to earn the right to enjoy my life.
I simply needed to live it.
So I walked.
I ate.
I explored.
I took photographs.
I bought things I loved.
I sat by the water.
And for once, I didn’t turn the experience into content immediately.
I didn’t think about monetizing it.
I didn’t think about whether the photograph could become a post.
I didn’t think about SEO.
I didn’t think about sales.
I didn’t think about the next business idea.
I was just there.
Vinaywa.
A woman sitting beside an ocean.
Alive.
Happy.
Grateful.
There are so many things I have now that once existed only in my imagination.
The perfume collection.
The beautiful shoes.
The quality clothes.
The wigs.
The home.
The plants.
The garden.
The furniture.
The bed.
The curtains.
The kitchen.
The little details nobody else would care about but mean everything to me.
I designed the home slowly.
I wanted it to feel alive.
Plants everywhere.
Natural textures.
Warm wood.
Soft neutrals.
Light.
Air.
Space.
A place where I could work without feeling like work had swallowed my home.
A place where Adriel could move around freely.
A place where I could make breakfast while listening to music.
A place where I could sit on the sofa in the evening and feel something I rarely felt when I was younger.
Settled.
Not trapped.
Settled.
There is a difference.
My kitchen garden is one of my favorite things.
There are herbs growing outside.
Some vegetables.
Plants in pots.
Things I started from tiny seedlings.
I remember how excited I was the first time something I planted actually grew.
I stood there staring at it like an idiot.
“I grew this.”
It was such a small thing.
But maybe that’s what life eventually taught me.
Big lives are made of small things.
A paid bill.
A planted seed.
A completed order.
A saved coin.
A good conversation.
A plane ticket.
A child’s laugh.
A new skill.
A cake that finally comes out right.
A morning when you wake up and realize you aren’t scared of the month anymore.
And yes, I became good at baking.
Really good.
I still remember the early cakes.
Some of them looked… questionable.
I laugh now.
But I kept practicing.
I learned decorating.
I learned patience.
I learned that sometimes the cake needs another attempt.
Now I can make something beautiful from a handful of ingredients.
There is something deeply satisfying about that.
I learned sewing too.
I learned to swim.
I joined badminton.
I developed hobbies that had nothing to do with making money.
That was another big lesson.
Not everything needed to become a business.
Some things could simply belong to me.
I could bake because I enjoy baking.
Swim because I want to swim.
Play badminton because it is fun.
Travel because the world is beautiful.
Take photographs because I like how light falls across a room.
I didn’t need to monetize every part of myself.
I was allowed to be a person.
The business grew.
That part still makes me emotional.
Because I remember the uncertainty.
I remember slow seasons.
I remember watching traffic fall.
I remember ad revenue disappointing me.
I remember wondering whether I had chosen the wrong path.
I remember looking at sales and feeling personally insulted by numbers.
I remember clients who didn’t trust online shops.
I remember delivery issues.
I remember chasing payments.
I remember thinking about a physical shop.
I remember thinking about whether I needed to change everything.
I remember wanting some external force to come along and make everything easier.
And eventually I stopped waiting.
I didn’t become fearless.
I just became more disciplined.
I learned the numbers.
I created systems.
I diversified.
I built websites.
I created digital products.
I pursued corporate clients.
I learned what my customers actually wanted.
I stopped trying to make every idea happen at once.
I learned to finish.
And somewhere in all of that, the business stopped being something I was desperately trying to save.
It became something I was building.
There is a difference.
One day, I looked at my annual revenue and realized I had crossed my first million.
I remember exactly where I was.
I remember the silence.
There was no dramatic music.
No audience.
No fireworks.
Just me staring at the screen.
One million.
My first million in revenue.
I leaned back.
And the first thought wasn’t even excitement.
It was:
“Damn. I really didn’t quit.”
That was the part that made me emotional.
Not the number.
The woman behind it.
Because there were so many points where quitting would have made sense.
So many times I thought I was behind.
So many times I thought other people were moving faster.
So many times I thought maybe I wasn’t built for this.
But I kept going.
Not perfectly.
Not consistently at first.
Not without mistakes.
But I kept returning.
And eventually, returning became the thing that changed my life.
My income now comes from different places.
The gift shop.
Websites.
Advertising.
Design services.
Digital products.
Other opportunities I couldn’t have predicted when I wrote my list.
Some months are better than others.
Of course they are.
But the difference is that I no longer experience a slow month as a personal crisis.
I have reserves.
I have systems.
I have multiple streams.
I have data.
I have experience.
I have a network.
I have skills.
I have options.
That’s what money eventually gave me.
Not just things.
Options.
And I think that is what I wanted all along.
I look at my son now and sometimes feel a strange ache.
Because I remember being afraid that I wasn’t ready.
Afraid I would snap.
Afraid he would see me crying.
Afraid my stress would become his childhood.
Afraid that I wouldn’t be enough.
I wish I could go back and tell that woman something.
You don’t have to be a perfect mother to be a good mother.
You don’t have to have everything figured out before you begin.
You don’t have to hide every vulnerable moment.
Children don’t need invincible mothers.
They need mothers who love them.
Mothers who repair.
Mothers who listen.
Mothers who keep showing up.
And I did.
I showed up.
Sometimes exhausted.
Sometimes overwhelmed.
Sometimes uncertain.
But I showed up.
And now I look at him and realize that we grew together.
I wasn’t the mother I imagined I would be.
I became the mother I could become.
And maybe that was enough.
There is something else I notice now.
I don’t crave rescue anymore.
That desire used to be so strong.
I wanted someone to come and make life easier.
A rich family.
A generous partner.
A sponsor.
A grant.
A miracle.
Some external force that would finally give me the leap I needed.
I don’t judge the woman who wanted that.
She was tired.
She wanted to be held.
She wanted to stop being responsible for everything.
She wanted to know what it felt like to exhale.
But now?
I don’t need someone to save me.
If love comes, beautiful.
If partnership comes, beautiful.
If someone wants to build with me, wonderful.
But I don’t need to bargain with love for security.
I don’t need to stay somewhere because I cannot afford to leave.
I don’t need to tolerate being undervalued because I need the money.
I don’t need to make myself smaller to keep someone around.
That freedom is priceless.
Sometimes I think about all the people I used to miss.
The people I once thought I couldn’t live without.
The people whose absence used to occupy entire rooms in my mind.
Some of them are still memories.
Some I haven’t spoken to in years.
Some I occasionally wonder about.
“I wonder what she’s doing now.”
“I wonder where he ended up.”
And then I go back to my life.
Not because those people weren’t important.
Because my life became important too.
That was the real shift.
I stopped making absence the center of my story.
I also stopped waiting for perfect circumstances.
There was always going to be something.
A slow month.
A broken machine.
A difficult client.
A family problem.
A bad day.
A new expense.
A setback.
A fear.
Life didn’t become perfectly smooth.
I became better equipped.
That’s what I understand now.
Abundance isn’t the absence of problems.
It is having enough resources, resilience, wisdom and support that problems don’t convince you your whole life is falling apart.
I still have bad days.
I still cry.
I still overthink sometimes.
I still get frustrated.
I still have moments when I want to disappear into bed and not answer anyone.
But I no longer mistake a bad day for a bad life.
That’s freedom too.
Tonight, I sit outside.
The garden is quiet.
The house behind me glows through the windows.
Adriel is inside doing something that I should probably tell him to stop doing.
I can hear him laughing.
I smile.
The air is warm.
There is a cup beside me.
My phone is sitting on the table.
No urgent messages.
No unpaid balance I’m afraid to ask about.
No bill I don’t know how I’m going to cover.
No desperate calculation.
Just an ordinary evening.
And suddenly I remember the woman who wrote her 100 desires.
I remember how she wrote about this life without knowing whether any of it would happen.
She wanted the house.
The garden.
The money.
The savings.
The travel.
The business.
The machines.
The clients.
The education fund.
The perfume.
The clothes.
The shoes.
The beautiful phone.
The hobbies.
The experiences.
The freedom.
She wanted all of it.
And I want to tell her:
Thank you for not giving up.
Thank you for continuing when it was embarrassing.
Thank you for trying again after disappointing months.
Thank you for learning.
Thank you for getting back up.
Thank you for refusing to let temporary circumstances become your permanent identity.
Thank you for choosing the business again.
Thank you for choosing yourself.
Thank you for choosing your son.
Thank you for deciding that your life could be bigger.
Thank you for writing the desires down before you knew how they would happen.
Because look at us now.
Look.
We’re here.
I think about the woman who used to stare at the ceiling at night and wonder whether life would ever get easier.
I wish she could see this.
I wish she could see the coast.
I wish she could see the house.
I wish she could see the savings account.
I wish she could see the business.
I wish she could see her son.
I wish she could see herself.
Not as the woman who was struggling.
Not as the woman who was behind.
Not as the woman who had to figure everything out.
But as the woman who figured some of it out anyway.
The woman who kept learning.
The woman who kept building.
The woman who eventually realized that she didn’t need one giant breakthrough.
She needed a thousand small decisions that pointed in the same direction.
And those decisions accumulated.
Money accumulated.
Skills accumulated.
Confidence accumulated.
Customers accumulated.
Experiences accumulated.
Savings accumulated.
Plants grew.
A child grew.
A business grew.
And so did she.
I used to think the future would arrive dramatically.
I imagined a single moment where everything changed.
One opportunity.
One relationship.
One viral post.
One massive sale.
One lucky break.
One person saying yes.
But my life didn’t change because of one moment.
It changed because I kept choosing the future even when the present was unimpressive.
That is what I didn’t understand.
The future is usually built in boring rooms.
On ordinary Tuesdays.
During slow seasons.
When nobody is watching.
When the numbers aren’t exciting.
When you are tired.
When you have to post again.
Follow up again.
Create again.
Save again.
Learn again.
Try again.
And then one day you look around and realize:
“Oh.”
“This is the life I was building.”
I am grateful now for every version of me that refused to completely give up.
Even the messy ones.
Especially the messy ones.
The woman who cried.
The woman who spiraled.
The woman who wanted rescue.
The woman who got angry.
The woman who got distracted.
The woman who fell in love.
The woman who got disappointed.
The woman who was terrified.
The woman who didn’t know what she was doing.
The woman who sometimes felt like she was wasting her potential.
I don’t hate any of them.
They got me here.
And I don’t need to pretend they were perfect to be grateful for them.
I simply needed them to keep moving.
And they did.
There is still so much I want.
That’s the funny thing.
You would think achieving your desires would make you stop wanting things.
It doesn’t.
It just changes the quality of wanting.
Before, I wanted from fear.
“I need this because I don’t want to struggle anymore.”
Now I want from curiosity.
“What else could life be?”
That’s a completely different question.
Now I want to see more countries.
I want to take Adriel on more adventures.
I want to build more things.
I want to learn more.
I want to make better cakes.
I want to design beautiful spaces.
I want to see more oceans.
I want to sit in beautiful hotels.
I want to visit cities I haven’t seen.
I want to create products I haven’t imagined yet.
I want to invest.
I want to give.
I want to rest.
I want to wake up in different places.
I want to keep becoming.
Not because I am incomplete.
Because I am alive.
Sometimes I sit with that realization for a long time.
I used to think the goal was to finally become someone who had everything together.
Now I think the goal is simply to become someone who can enjoy what she has while continuing to grow.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing a finish line.
I want to live.
Really live.
I want slow mornings.
Busy mornings.
Airport mornings.
Beach evenings.
Kitchen afternoons.
Random road trips.
Business meetings.
Birthday cakes.
Garden mornings.
Badminton evenings.
Quiet nights.
Loud laughter.
Good food.
Beautiful clothes.
Deep conversations.
New ideas.
Old memories.
Photographs.
Books.
Music.
Work I am proud of.
People I love.
A home that feels safe.
A bank account that feels safe.
A body I take care of.
A son who knows he is loved.
A business that gives me freedom.
And enough space between all of those things to actually notice that I am living.
If I could send one message backward through time, I wouldn’t tell the younger me exactly how everything would happen.
I wouldn’t tell her which business idea would work.
I wouldn’t tell her which people would leave.
I wouldn’t tell her which relationships wouldn’t survive.
I wouldn’t tell her how much money she would eventually make.
I wouldn’t tell her where she’d travel.
I wouldn’t tell her exactly when everything would change.
I’d tell her something simpler.
I’d say:
“Please don’t give up on yourself just because the current chapter is ugly.”
“Please don’t mistake delay for denial.”
“Please don’t decide that your life is small because your circumstances are small right now.”
“Please keep learning.”
“Please keep creating.”
“Please keep saving.”
“Please keep trying.”
“Please keep dreaming without making the dream a source of shame.”
“And please, whatever happens, don’t abandon yourself.”
Because that was the real victory.
Not the million.
Not the house.
Not the holidays.
Not the business.
Not the money.
I stayed.
I stayed long enough to meet the woman on the other side.
And now, when I travel, I don’t travel to escape my life.
I travel because I love my life enough to take it with me.
When I go to Mombasa, I am not running away.
When I go to Diani, I am not trying to forget something.
When I go to Watamu, I am not waiting for life to begin.
When I stand in Zanzibar and look at the ocean, I am not asking the universe to change my circumstances.
I am simply standing there.
Present.
Grateful.
Alive.
And maybe that’s the greatest desire that came true.
Not that I got everything I wanted.
But that I became capable of enjoying the things I once prayed for.
Tonight, I look around my home one more time.
The plants.
The curtains.
The furniture.
The photographs.
The little things I’ve collected along the way.
There is evidence everywhere.
Evidence that I lived.
Evidence that I tried.
Evidence that I didn’t stay the same woman forever.
I think about the 100 desires I wrote down.
Some happened exactly as I imagined.
Some happened better.
Some happened differently.
Some haven’t happened yet.
And some no longer matter.
But the woman who wrote them?
She was right to dream.
She was right to want more.
She was right to believe that life could expand.
She was right to imagine herself somewhere else.
And most importantly, she was right to keep going.
So if this is what life looks like when I finally get to the other side, then I have only one thing to say to the woman who lived before all of this:
Thank you.
Thank you for surviving the months that felt endless.
Thank you for showing up when the numbers were disappointing.
Thank you for creating when nobody was paying attention.
Thank you for believing in your ideas before other people did.
Thank you for learning.
Thank you for starting again.
Thank you for saving.
Thank you for taking risks.
Thank you for protecting your peace.
Thank you for choosing your son.
Thank you for choosing yourself.
Thank you for dreaming bigger than your circumstances.
Thank you for refusing to let one difficult season become your entire identity.
Thank you for not giving up.
Because I am sitting here now, years later, with the ocean still fresh in my memory, my son’s laughter somewhere inside the house, money in the bank, a beautiful home around me, a business that grew beyond what I once thought possible, and an entire world still waiting to be explored.
And I finally understand something I couldn’t understand then.
The woman I was waiting for was me.
She wasn’t coming from somewhere else.
She wasn’t going to be delivered by a man.
She wasn’t going to arrive through one lucky opportunity.
She wasn’t going to be created by perfect circumstances.
She was being built quietly, every time I got up.
Every time I tried again.
Every time I chose discipline over panic.
Every time I chose learning over shame.
Every time I chose action over another hour of overthinking.
Every time I put one more brick down.
And one day, without even realizing it, I looked around and discovered that I had built a home.
Not just a physical one.
A financial home.
An emotional home.
A life.
A place inside myself where I could finally say:
I am safe here.
I have enough.
I am free.
And there is still so much more life to live.
