I’ve always felt a kinship with women of the past. Not because I live in the past, but because something in their manner, their mischief, their melancholy… still lives in me.

I’ve often felt like I was born in the wrong time, more aligned with women who lingered in doorways not to be seen, but to make an entrance. Women who understood the subtle power of being, not broadcasting. I’ve never needed the whole room to notice me. I’ve needed the right ones to understand me.

Women like Colette, who wrote with razor precision and emotion so thick it could stop your breath. Women like Jackie, who understood the quiet power of grace under pressure. Brigitte, who flaunted her freedom while the world tried to box her in. Diana, who wore vulnerability like velvet, always catching the light, even when she wanted to hide. Their names are iconic, but their essence is subtle, and it’s that essence I find myself aching for in today’s world.

I see myself in Brigitte…barefoot and untamed, belonging only to herself. Her rebellion wasn’t loud; it was magnetic. She made sensuality feel sovereign, not performative.

I see myself in Colette…the literary rebel who wrote what others wouldn’t dare, naming what women feel but rarely say. She lived outside the lines and somehow made the margins feel like home with her visceral vulnerability.

I see myself in Jackie…her poise, her quiet force, her ability to carry grace like armor. She never had to explain herself. She let the world write its noise while she preserved the sacred.

And I see myself in Diana…the People’s Princess. In her ache to be real in an unreal world, in the way she wrapped her arms around pain with a tenderness that needed no approval. She didn’t always say the perfect thing, but she did and said the true thing.

These women weren’t perfect, but they were whole.

They didn’t curate themselves for consumption. They moved through life with a kind of vibration that didn’t need validation. And within me lives that same vibration, that same craving for something more timeless, more intentional.

As I write this from my apartment, twenty days into my forty-five in Paris, I’m reminded how deeply I’ve always been drawn to the French way of life, the unhurried meals, the quiet devotion to art, history, and music, the way fashion whispers rather than shouts. There’s an elegance in the pause, in the care for presentation, in the reverence for beauty and pleasure. It feels like oxygen in a world obsessed with speed and spectacle.

French culture, the cadence of the language, the layering of flavors, the poetry of Edith Piaf, the discipline in a well-tied scarf…all of it feels like a home I never had. It speaks to a part of me that has always felt out of place among the hurried, the careless, the performative. While others chase convenience, I chase craft. While others fill the silence, I savor it.

I’ve tried to find my place in today’s world, a world that rewards speed over soul, visibility over vision. And I’ve struggled. I’ve felt too quiet, too deep, too slow, too discerning. I’ve felt like I had to explain my natural softness, justify my silence, and prove my value. I’ve walked into rooms filled with agency and still felt invisible, because my kind of agency doesn’t shout. It doesn’t sell. It just simply is.

I continue to struggle fitting into this modern culture, where curated personas have replaced genuine personalities, and sophistication has shifted to spectacle. It’s a world that feels louder, faster, and more artificial than I ever wanted. Yet when I hear a French chanson playing from a small café speaker or pass by a charming bookshop in a hidden Parisian alley, something clicks. I am reminded of who I am. A woman who loves nuance. Who craves texture in language, fashion, and friendship. 

Brigitte. Jackie. Colette. Diana.

These women found rebellion in restraint. They still exist in every woman who refuses to be reduced. Brigitte, with her tousled hair and bedroom gaze, belonged to herself, not to you. She danced barefoot in Saint-Tropez and made a generation fall in love with freedom. Colette wrote women as whole beings, lovers, mothers, and wild things. She kissed women in public when no one dared, and still found time to describe the smell of cut grass in a sentence so perfect it ached.

Jackie buried a president and kept her chin level. She curated history while raising children in the glare of flashbulbs. She taught a nation how to grieve in silence and rebuild with grace. And Diana, the People’s Princess. She walked through landmine zones in a crisp white blouse. She touched AIDS patients when others turned away. She wore her sorrow like silk…creased, elegant, lived in. She redefined royalty not by blood, but by humanity.

I’m not trying to be them. I already am.

Not in fame or photograph, but in the unseen moments. In the letters I write that no one reads. In the way I feed my soul with books, with old music, with slow mornings. In the way I’ve chosen solitude over small talk, depth over display.

In a world that values noise, I am learning to protect my silence. And in that silence, I have found women like me. Like us. Like them. They weren’t perfect, but they were whole. Not curated. Not filtered. Not begging to be seen. They walked through rooms, and people made space…not because of the volume, but because of the vibration.

So please …don’t ask where she went. She never left. She’s been here all along.

We’re writing…restoring, resisting, and redefining…. quietly. We’re raising children with intentionality, reading books that aren’t trending, working long, mundane hours, aging with elegance, saying no more often, and choosing solitude over spectacle. In a world that prizes the performative, we may seem far from the surface, but we are closer than ever to the soul.

I am learning not to contort. Not to conform. Not to filter the parts of me that are inconveniently real. I am reclaiming my space alongside the women who moved differently. The ones who weren’t trying to be seen, they were trying to see.

She didn’t always say the right thing, but she said the true thing. She laughed too loudly. She hugged too long. She lived in the rupture, and for that, we loved her.

And now, one may ask…where did she go, or rather, when will she return?

She is still here…make room for her.