A Reflection on Colette, Legacy, and the Courage to Choose Yourself

Some women walk the well-worn paths—and then there are women like Colette.

A writer, performer, and sensualist who defied convention, Colette lived boldly, curiously, and unapologetically. Her pen carved space for truths many women were too afraid to name, and her characters—so often mirrors of herself—pushed against the edges of polite society with poise and ferocity.

Her novel The Vagabond isn’t just literature—it’s a reckoning. Through Renée Néré, a woman who leaves a faithless husband and makes her living on the stage, Colette explores a question that still presses against the walls of my own heart: How do I remain true to myself in a world that would prefer me silenced or softened?

Renée’s refusal to be “kept,” to be rescued or reduced, echoes a restlessness I know well. Like her, I’ve stared down the comfort of what’s expected and chosen the ache of the unknown. Not because it’s easier, but because it’s mine. Because freedom—absolute freedom—requires choosing selfhood over safety.

And then there’s Gigi—young, observant, being groomed to play a role for which society has written a script. But in the end, she rewrites that script, choosing love and partnership on her terms. That moment of claiming her agency is one I recognize in my bones. Like Gigi, I have unlearned the rules written for me and decided to become the author of my own story.

As Colette once wrote, “You do not go from one happiness to another, you make your happiness. And sometimes it’s a lonely business.” I have found this to be achingly true. Telling my story—unplugged, unfiltered, and in my voice—has not always made me likable. But it has made me whole.

That’s the heartbeat behind Love Me—a collection born from lived experience, from burning bridges to save myself, from rebuilding without apology, from releasing the burden of pleasing and performing. Love Me is not just a title; it’s a dare to myself. To stop waiting for permission. To name what hurt, what shaped me, and what I now choose. To speak from the inside out, without softening my truth for someone else’s comfort.

There’s power in claiming your narrative without apology. There’s power in saying:

This is who I am. I will not shrink. I will not mask my truth to make you comfortable.

Like Colette, I am a woman shaped by experience and sharpened by introspection. Like Renée, I am a vagabond of the soul—unsettled not by dissatisfaction, but by curiosity, longing, and a desire to know life on my terms. Like Gigi, I am no longer being prepared for a life that pleases others—I am preparing to live my own.

But claiming yourself comes at a cost, especially when truth interrupts the illusion of a family’s carefully managed silence.

When a long-held secret—especially one involving abuse, addiction, or trauma—is unearthed, it often triggers psychological seismic shifts not just for the individual who reveals it, but across the entire family system. These shifts can be uncomfortable, threatening, and in some cases, relationship-altering.

In families like mine, silence was the mortar that held the illusion of harmony together. My father—charming to some, chaotic to others—was an alcoholic. When the poison was in his veins, he could be cruel, especially to my mother. He died young, just thirty, of cancer.

He was my hero—and still is. But, like all heroes —and really, all of us —he was flawed. That doesn’t take away my love for him. I’ve learned I can hold two conflicting truths about my father and still love him deeply. I can acknowledge the harm and also honor his goodness. I can carry his memory—and his legacy—forward with complexity, not erasure.

It took nearly twenty years before my mother finally spoke her truth. Not in anger. Not with bitterness. Just with clarity. I had offered her the space—one I wish someone had offered her sooner. But the truth is disruptive. It doesn’t tiptoe in. It arrives like a tremor, shaking what was once buried beneath layers of protection, denial, and fear.

When her story in S.H.E. Share Heal Empower, Volume One, came out, it wasn’t her voice they turned on. It was mine. They blamed me for giving her the microphone, for “convincing” her, for disrupting the myth we’d all been taught to protect. They said I did it for attention. For gain. As if truth had to be justified, as if healing were a crime.

What they didn’t understand is this: I didn’t invent the pain. I inherited it. And by speaking it aloud, I refused to pass it on.

Some family members stopped speaking to me. Oddly, they still talked to my mother, whose story they may quietly have resented her for sharing but never challenged her outright, only me – I became the scapegoat, the breaker of spells, the one who pointed to the cracks in the stained glass and said, “We are allowed to see this clearly despite their denial.”

But clarity has a cost. And courage has consequences. Still, I would do it again because I’ve learned that not everyone wants freedom. Some prefer the familiarity of silence, even if it stifles them. But I made a choice: not to be loved for who I pretend to be, but to be known for who I truly am.

And in the wreckage of broken silence, I found something that felt like peace.

This fall, I’ll spend forty days in Paris. A pilgrimage of sorts—not just to learn the language, but to live in it. To follow Colette’s footsteps, sip from the well of creative unrest, and write without constraint. To honor the voice I’ve fought so hard to reclaim.

Because if I’ve learned anything from Colette, from my own unraveling, and the long road back to self, it’s this: “There is no shame in the wanderer’s path. Only truth. Only beauty. Only becoming.”