There’s a little girl I’ve been carrying around for a very long time.

She’s quiet. Obedient. Extremely good at making herself small.

She learned early that the safest place was down. Head down. Voice down. Expectations down.

She became an expert at disappearing without actually leaving the room.

Impressive skill set really. Completely useless but impressive.

For years I thought she was just shy.

Turns out she was just scared.

And here’s the thing about scared little girls who grow up — they don’t automatically stop being scared. They just get better at hiding it. They build careers and credentials and identities so impressive that nobody thinks to look in the basement.

Including themselves.

I built quite the impressive distraction.

Thirty years of performance reviews and crisis management and being indispensable.

Turns out “indispensable” is just another word for “please don’t leave me.” And “I’ll work at 3am” is just another way of saying “I’m still worth something, right?”

The scared little girl was running the whole operation.

In a power suit.

With excellent lashes.

Nobody suspected a thing.

But retirement has a way of removing the distraction. The career disappears and suddenly there’s nothing between you and the basement. Just you and the quiet and the thing you’ve been outrunning for thirty years.

So you have two choices.

Go back down.

Or protest.

I choose to protest.

Not in the streets. Not with a sign. Although — wait. Maybe.

I protest against my own doubts. My fears. My unkindness to myself. The voice that still sometimes whispers you are too much and not enough simultaneously — which is genuinely impressive cruelty when you think about it.

I am done looking down at the foundation.

I am done being ashamed of the basement.

It was part of the house. It is not the whole house.

And I have spent too long living in the dark when there are perfectly good floors above me.

Chin up.

There is nothing to be ashamed of.

There never was.