Where Light Grows

We live in a world, especially in the arts, where “becoming” has almost become a brand. We post our breakthroughs, our quiet healing moments, our sunlit mornings with coffee and a journal, but only when they look poetic. We talk about progress, but we often polish even our vulnerability until it shines. Like sunsets, we capture the golden hour, the soft light, the aesthetic peace, but we rarely show what comes before or after.

And I’m guilty of it too. I have edited the messiness out of my own becoming. I have smiled and said I am okay with being in progress while secretly worrying that I am behind. I have told myself “it is all part of the journey” even when I felt stuck or uncertain. I have tried to make it all look meaningful, even when it didn’t feel beautiful at all.

But what if real growth is not graceful? What if it’s awkward and uneven and not at all aesthetic?

We do not talk enough about those in-between phases. The boredom. The resistance. The silence that makes you question if anything is happening at all. The days you’re not evolving, just tired. Just existing. Like the days when I’m too exhausted from working to even set foot in a dance class, even though I love it deeply, because I know my brain can’t take in one more piece of choreography. So instead, I go to the gym. I walk. I move. I breathe. I do something simple that asks nothing of me but presence. And maybe that counts too. Maybe that is still sacred.

Because growth does not always look like transformation. Sometimes it looks like stillness. Sometimes it is the quiet decision to keep going, to keep showing up in ways that do not look impressive. Sometimes it is simply staying with yourself through the discomfort, instead of abandoning who you are because the process feels too slow.

I have started asking myself harder questions lately. Who am I becoming for? Am I changing because something inside me wants to, or because I feel like I am supposed to?

Maybe the most honest kind of growth is the kind no one applauds. The kind that does not need a caption. The kind that happens when no one is watching. Maybe becoming does not need to be seen to be real.

Like the last light of a sunset, growth happens quietly. It may go unnoticed, but it leaves a lasting mark within us.

So if you’re in the thick of it, messy and uncertain, you’re not doing it wrong. You’re just not editing it. And that’s where the real becoming begins.