Permission to Not Be Finished
If I wait until I’m finished, I’ll never start at all.
Your presence is proof: The Middle Part isn’t a void, it’s where we find each other.
Subscribe if you want to keep walking through it together.
- I’m genuinely glad you’re here. -
I used to think I had to keep my mouth shut until I was healed.
Until I could prove I’d clawed my way out of the pit.
Until I had a shiny “after” picture that made my “before” look worth surviving.
But waiting to be finished kept me silent for years. It kept me in the shadows, convincing myself my story wasn’t valid yet. That nobody wanted to hear from the girl still bleeding, still fumbling, still trying to figure out which way was up.
And now? I call bullshit.
The obsession with the “after”
Our culture is obsessed with glow-ups. Before-and-after pictures. The memoir that starts with chaos and ends tied up with a cute little bow so tidy it could go on a Hallmark shelf.
But most of us are living in the middle part.
Not at the bottom. Not at the polished, triumphant top.
Right in the messy middle.
The place where you’ve left one version of yourself behind but haven’t fully stepped into the next.
The place where you’re duct-taping pieces of your soul together, figuring it out one hard conversation or life lesson at a time.
The place that doesn’t photograph well, but carries the real transformation.
That’s where I am.
That’s where I write from.
The ones who helped me weren’t finished either
When I look back, the voices that cracked me open weren’t the ones who had it all figured out. They weren’t the ones with a ten-step framework or a perfect brand.
They were the messy ones. The half-healed, half-broken people willing to say,
“I don’t know it all, but here’s what I’ve learned the hard way.”
That was enough.
That’s what made me feel human instead of defective.
Their unfinishedness was my permission slip.
Their middle allowed me to confidently (though not always comfortably) stand in mine.
Breadcrumbs > Blueprints
I don’t have a blueprint. I’m not handing out neat little roadmaps with gold stars and clear directions.
But what I do have are breadcrumbs. Little truths I’ve picked up while stumbling my way through.
The kind you put in your pocket for when you need them most.
And sometimes? That’s better than a blueprint. Because blueprints assume a straight line. Breadcrumbs remind you that the crooked path still leads somewhere.
The time I almost swallowed my own voice
A couple years ago, I wanted to start talking about burnout in some capacity. I was neck-deep in it from running a business that looked good on paper but drained the hell out of me. I had things I wanted to say, lessons I’d been burned enough times to know by heart.
I would vent to friends or those close to me, but I didn’t share my story publicly. I convinced myself I wasn’t “ready” because I was still in the thick of it. Who was I to talk about burnout when I was still exhausted, still unraveling?
Looking back, that silence wasn’t humility, it was self-betrayal. Because the very thing I needed to say, the truth that alignment matters, that burnout doesn’t mean you’re lazy, that forcing yourself into something that doesn’t fit will kill you from the inside out, was already living in my body.
I didn’t need a certification. I needed a mic.
Why I call this The Middle Part
The Middle Part isn’t just a title. It’s a philosophy.
It’s about refusing to hide until you’re finished.
It’s about telling the truth from the awkward, tender, half-formed places.
Vulnerable. Raw. Honest. Exposed.
It’s about being willing to say, “Here’s what it looks like mid-climb,” instead of waiting until you’ve reached the summit.
Because the middle is the part all of us are actually living. And when we share from here, it’s not performance, it’s resonance.
I’m done waiting
I no longer buy the lie that you need to be finished to matter.
That you have to arrive before you can speak.
That your story only counts if it ends in victory.
You don’t need permission. You don’t need a mountaintop.
You just need to turn around mid-climb and say to those just a couple steps behind you, “Here’s what it looks like from where I’m standing right now.”
Because somebody out there isn’t looking for your polished end story.
They’re looking for proof that they aren’t alone in the middle.
So this is me: unfinished, unpolished, still sorting through the rubble.
Because if I wait until I’m finished, I’ll never write at all.
Photo by Hernan Perez on Unsplash
You seem to have good genes.
This hit me right in the core!