Falling Forward Into the Woman I Was Always Becoming

Dear Becoming Soul,

There comes a moment in every healing journey when the mirror stops lying.

When the reflection staring back refuses to perform.

When the woman blinking at you says, enough.

Enough of the curated composure.

Enough of the exhausting, brittle choreography of trying to “get it right.”

Enough of playing flawless when the soul is asking to be free.

For years, I mistook perfectionism for excellence.

I wore it like a badge—polished, pristine, impenetrable.

But perfection was never a standard.

It was a shield.

A performance.

A trauma-trained choreography passed down through survival, culture, silence, and the unspoken rules of being a woman who refuses to fall apart in public.

I convinced myself that perfection meant responsibility.

That perfection meant divine discipline.

That perfection meant worth.

But what I learned—through heartbreak, grief, growth, reclamation, and the sacred labor of becoming—is that perfectionism is not power.

It is fear dressed as mastery.

It is the shadow of unresolved wounds.

It is the echo of old expectations that never belonged to me.

And I finally put them down.

Progression, I discovered, is infinitely more holy.

Progression is a pulse.

A movement.

A rising.

Progression is falling forward—face-first sometimes—and having the audacity to call it grace.

It is the willingness to say, I am learning myself anew, without shame, without shrinking.

Progression is the truth that does not need applause.

Perfectionism required me to perform for people who never saw me.

Progression invited me to witness myself.

Perfectionism was rooted in pleasing others—quieting my own needs, over-functioning, over-delivering, over-explaining, over-sacrificing.

It demanded that I earn my belonging through the impossibility of flawlessness.

Progression whispered, “Daughter, you belong because you are.”

Accountability Became My Freedom

No one tells you that accountability is a form of liberation.

That it is not punishment but permission—

to evolve, to outgrow, to tell the truth about the parts you once hid.

Accountability woke me up.

It reminded me that I am human—beautifully, wildly, radically human.

Not a machine.

Not a silhouette.

Not a role.

Not a performance.

It taught me that correcting myself is an act of devotion.

That naming my missteps is a love letter to the woman I am becoming.

That responsibility is not shame—it is sovereignty.

And in taking accountability for the ways I abandoned myself, I learned how to return home.

I No Longer Live Through the Lens of “Perfect”

Today, I live through the lens of progress,

which is to say, I live.

I breathe.

I try.

I stretch.

I unlearn.

I fall with intention.

I rise with memory.

Because progression requires something perfection cannot tolerate—my soul.

My voice.

My body.

My boundaries.

My spirit unmasked, unfiltered, and unapologetically in motion.

Perfectionism demanded stillness.

Progression demands truth.

And truth is the most sacred thing I own.

This Is Your Permission Too

If you are reading this—

the woman who has carried the weight of “getting it right,”

the woman whose smile has hidden storms,

the woman who is tired of performing a version of herself that no longer fits—

I want you to know this:

Progression is enough.

You are enough.

Your becoming is the masterpiece.

Let yourself fall forward.

Let accountability be your teacher.

Let the soft, imperfect edges of your humanity be the place where your true power begins.

Perfectionism is a prison; progression is a pilgrimage.

And I am walking with you.

With clarity.

With courage.

With fire and grace braided into the spine of every step.

Because this—this unfiltered rise, this holy unraveling, this sacred reconstruction—is what freedom looks like.

And I choose freedom every single day.

— Sherley Delia

Founder, Visionary, and Woman in Everlasting Progression

Healing Majestically Consultancy