A few weeks ago, one of my best friends sent me a voice memo. Her first thought after reading my newsletter, was:

"Why didn't this happen sooner?"

I'd been asking myself the same question.

I've been a writer all my life.

Journals upon journals stacked in my closet over the years, collecting dust. Diary entries, essays I wrote for fun, fantasy stories of women who ran with the wolves and followed the stars...

Writing was like breathing for me. I dreamt of being an author long before music ever entered the picture.

But my friend wasn't questioning why I had stopped writing. She was asking why I hadn't started sharing in this way.

And to be honest, I wasn't really sure.

Last month, my partner and I went to get tacos from our favorite food truck park.

As we sat down to wait for our food, I took a glance at the farthest truck. There was a man standing just outside it. He had been lingering around the food truck since we arrived.

At first, I thought he was just waiting for his order. Then, ten minutes became twenty, and I couldn't help but start to ponder the dynamic between him and the woman working inside the truck.

I watched from afar as she reached through the window to pass the gentleman a box of food. As he grabbed it, his hands lingered close to hers. Long enough to make it clear that they definitely weren't strangers.

I thought to myself, "This is the kind of interaction that 12 year old Brooklyn would have gotten butterflies just thinking about. The kind of moment she would write into her stories."

So why not now?

My friend's question rang in my head. What had changed between now and then?

Why do moments that would have moved me to write once upon a time, no longer stir me in the same way?

Had the novelty of romantic love worn off now that I'd felt what it's like to be desired? Or was it that the aperture of my worldview had expanded, shifting its focus entirely?

Where I once would have seen only the thrill of being chosen–and wanting it so badly that I had to write it into being–I now saw the story beneath the story.

I saw a young woman working by herself into the late hours, likely for her family's business. I saw the dreams buried beneath the routine. Dreams she might not even realize she has.

Until that moment, I don't think it had quite hit me yet just how much I'd changed over the years.

Ironically enough, I stopped writing fiction and love stories the first time I fell in what-I-thought-was-love. By the time it happened, I had written about it so often I was sure I knew what it felt like. The rush. The tension. The sparks. The depth.

By age thirteen, I was prepared to be consumed. And consumed I was. So much so, that by the time he had chewed me up and spit me out a year later, I was too damaged to remember who I was before him.

Everyone prepared me for the fall. But no one warned me what it would feel like when the person who was meant to catch you...doesn't. And before you know it, you're sprawled out on the concrete. Bones bent in all the wrong places. That hurt more than I was ready for.

Isn't it crazy how all it takes is that one person to change everything?

By age 14, my innocence had frayed. Ripped at the seams. Not in one fell swoop, but slowly.

I was in no way shielded from the reality of what men wanted or what they were capable of.

I was catcalled by seniors while walking to my first period class in a hoodie and jeans. Harassed with invasive questions about my body over the phone. Cornered in front of fellow classmates and asked to spin around so they could check if my body looked how they thought it would...

Safe to say, it didn't take long for me to learn that the real world was far less glamorous than the stories I'd been reading.

In the real world, the monsters weren't monsters, but men. Or even more accurately, and more horrifying, boys pretending to be men.

By age sixteen, I had my own story. My own pain. My own universe full of monsters.

I didn't know it yet, but my heroine's journey had officially begun.

And quite frankly, its hard to write a story you're living in the midst of.

There have been plenty of moments along the way that felt storybook worthy, and yet, I've been too present within them to write about them. (Anywhere other than my journal, that is.)

The fantasizing slowed when my life started looking more like the fairytale I'd always dreamed—except, the monsters were realer, and the magic was hidden in the mundane.

Being chosen wasn't something that happened to other girls anymore. I had already chosen myself after finally realizing, through many a failed relation/situationship, that the dream I had been sold was quite frankly overrated.

Romance was no longer the center of my world. Instead, it became the filter that colored it. Love was no longer something I fantasized about to pass the time.

Love wasn't outside of me anymore.

Love was me.

Now...the story was mine to tell.

And that's exactly why I'm ready to write again. Not to escape into a story, but to share the one I'm actually living. Which is far more magical than I ever thought it could be.

Stepping into this new phase of my writing has felt like slipping on a beloved silk gown you tucked in the back of your closet years ago.

Creating my newsletter hasn't been a crazy rush of newness or accomplishment, but a homecoming. An exhale. Like finally trying on that dress again and remembering why you bought it in the first place.

The dress hadn't changed. You’d simply grown into the woman it was made for.

So here's my question for you: what did you stop doing when your life got full? What's the thing you tucked in the back of your closet that's waiting for you to grow into it? To give it another chance? What's stopping you from trying it on again?

I'd love to hear.

With love,

Brooklyn.