I’ve been thinking about time.

Not in the way we usually talk about it. Not calendars, deadlines, productivity hacks, or “what’s your five-year plan?” I mean time as something we’ve agreed to believe in. Something that feels real because we keep obeying it.

But lately, it’s started to feel… optional.

Or at least, not as authoritative as we’ve made it.

Because when I actually drop into my body, not my mind, not my schedule, not my expectations, something strange happens. Time loosens. It stretches. When I am in play, creativity, love, and fully in my body, it disappears completely.

And the only thing that remains is desire.

Not future desire. Not “one day when I have more money / time / confidence / proof.” Not the version of desire that lives in vision boards and neatly categorised goals.

I mean the desire that exists right now. The one you can feel in your chest, your belly, your skin. The one that doesn’t need permission to exist.

And I’m starting to realise something that feels really obvious:

You cannot access your real desire in the future.

You can only access it here. In the present. In the body.

And that changes everything, because most of us have been taught to live slightly ahead of ourselves. To constantly project forward. To improve, optimise, plan, prepare. To become. As the good student and obedient compliant adult, I was taught to map out my life in terms of my yearly and 5 yearly goals. I was asked in times of conversation lulls, what is your 5 year plan by relatives or parents. First dates tended to always circle around this need to know what my next years looked like, and when I became a mother, the insistence on mapping out her future for her was the topic of too many conversations with friends and strangers alike.

But desire doesn’t live in becoming. It lives in being. And I think this is where so many of us get lost. Because we’ve been taught that desire is something we chase. Something we earn. Something that arrives once we are “ready.”

But what if desire is actually the starting point? What if it is not the reward at the end of the path, but the path itself? There was a moment recently where I tried something simple. I let myself actually feel a desire I’ve been quietly holding. Not analyse it. Not question whether it’s realistic or appropriate or “on brand.” Just feel it.

And immediately, everything changed.

My posture changed.
My energy shifted.
The way I imagined moving through my day felt completely different.

Not in some dramatic, overnight-transformation way. But in a subtle, undeniable way. Like I had stepped into a slightly different version of reality. And that’s when it clicked.

That moment didn’t happen in the future. It didn’t require anything external. It happened because I was present enough to let desire land in my body.

Which makes me wonder how many of us are delaying our lives by constantly placing desire somewhere else.

“I’ll feel that when…”
“I’ll become her when…”
“I’ll allow that once…”

But there is no “once.”

There is only now. And if desire is not allowed here, it doesn’t suddenly become available later. It just stays inaccessible.

And maybe that’s why so many women feel disconnected from what they actually want. Because we’ve been trained, not just culturally, but epigenetically, to leave our bodies.

To live in our heads.
To intellectualise.
To analyse.
To override sensation.

To mistrust the very place where desire lives.

We’ve also been taught that desire is dangerous. That it makes us selfish. That it distracts us. That it pulls us away from responsibility, from service, from being “good.”

But the more I sit with this, the more I feel the opposite is true.

A woman disconnected from her desire is easier to manage.

Easier to direct.
Easier to exhaust.
Easier to convince that her role is to support, to give, to hold everything together — without ever asking what she actually wants.

And this is where it gets uncomfortable, because I don’t think this is accidental.

There has been a long, sustained effort, whether through culture, education, systems, or language, to separate women from their bodies, and therefore from their desire.

Not necessarily in some dramatic, villainous way. But in a quiet, consistent, normalised way.

In the way we are taught to prioritise everyone else first.
In the way we are rewarded for self-sacrifice.
In the way we are encouraged to delay pleasure, delay rest, delay truth.

Even the most well-meaning advice can reinforce it. "Put your oxygen mask on first," they say. But how many of us actually do that?

How many of us are walking around making sure everyone else can breathe before we even turn to ourselves and ask, “What do I need? What do I desire?”

And even when we do ask, we often collapse desire into something smaller.

“What do you want?” becomes “What’s practical?”
“What’s realistic?”
“What fits into the timeline?”

But desire doesn’t speak that language.

Desire is not efficient. Desire is not linear. Desire is not concerned with your five-step plan.

It is concerned with truth. And truth doesn’t operate on artificial time.

Because let’s be honest, time as we know it is relatively new. Structured, measured, monetised time is something we created. It’s not something we were born into.

Our bodies don’t naturally operate on 9-to-5.

They operate on cycles.

On rhythms.

On expansion and contraction.

On seasons.

And women, in particular, have a built-in relationship to this that we’ve been taught to ignore.

We have internal calendars. We have phases. We have moments of outward energy and moments of deep inward pull.

And yet we are expected to perform consistently, linearly, predictably — like machines.

To produce on demand.

To deliver on schedule.

To create as if creation is a task, not a process.

But creation, in its truest form, does not obey clocks.

You would never sit a pregnant woman down at six months and ask her to justify why she hasn’t given birth yet. You would never tell her she’s “behind.” You would never prescribe her extra classes to speed up the process. (Unfortunately this does happen in the industrial medical complex as early as 37 or 38 weeks, but that is another conversation for another time). The point here for now is that we understand, instinctively, that creation takes the time it takes.

And yet, outside of that one accepted context, we forget.

We turn against our own timing.

We rush.

We force.

We assume something is wrong if it hasn’t happened yet.

And in doing so, we disconnect from the very process that allows creation to happen at all.

Which is presence.

Which is the body.

Which is desire.

And maybe this is the quiet rebellion.

Not burning everything down. Not rejecting the world entirely. But refusing to abandon ourselves within it.

Refusing to exile desire to some distant future. Refusing to measure our worth against timelines that were never designed for us.

Instead, coming back. To the body. To the now. To the simple, radical act of feeling what we want — without immediately trying to control it.

Because something extraordinary happens when a woman allows herself to be with her desire in the present moment. She becomes different. Not because she has achieved something. But because she is no longer waiting.

And that shift — that internal shift — has a ripple effect.

Other women feel it. Even if it’s subtle. Even if it’s unspoken. There is a permission that starts to move through the room.

A soft, powerful recognition:

Oh. That’s allowed.

And from there, something begins to build. Not in a forced, organised, hierarchical way.

But organically.

Woman to woman.

Energy to energy.

Desire to desire.

A kind of quiet uprising that doesn’t need to announce itself.

It just… spreads. And suddenly, you’re not alone. You’re resonating. With women who are also remembering. Also reclaiming. Also stepping out of timelines that never made sense.

And into lives that feel… real.

Messy.
Spontaneous.
Alive.

Unapologetically their own. And maybe that’s what freedom actually looks like. Not having everything figured out. Not having everything under control.

But being so deeply in your body, so present with your desire, that you no longer need to delay your life.

Because you are already in it.

 

Listen to the full musing on the Becoming Flame Podcast xx