“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
— George Eliot
I”ve had dreams that have lived inside me for so long, they’ve become like old friends—sometimes loud and demanding, sometimes quiet and distant, but always there. For years, they felt just out of reach. Life, in all its chaos and beauty, always seemed to get in the way. And these aren’t small dreams, by the way. These are the big, life-shifting, heart-stirring dreams that keep whispering to me when I’m lying awake at 3 a.m., fanning myself with the sheet because menopause is a beast.
I used to wonder:
Are my dreams getting further away? Or are they simply changing shape?
Is life really getting in the way… or do I just need to reprioritise?
The Dream That Wouldn’t Let Go
Out of nowhere, when I was 19, I said, “I’m going to write a book.”
I’m still not sure where the idea came from. I wasn’t someone who saw herself as a writer. I wasn’t scribbling poems in journals or getting lost in short stories. But something inside me said I was going to write about the relationships between a group of women. I could see them clearly, these women. I didn’t know them, but I knew of them.
The idea I had back in the late eighties eventually faded, but the dream—the one where I wrote a book—never left.
It sat there.
Festering.
Nagging.
Like an itch I couldn’t quite reach.
Over the years, I tried different ideas. Nothing ever sat quite right.
Fast forward to 2010, and something shifted. I had a spark—an idea. The story was different from the one I imagined at 19, but the themes were still there: women, connection, love, loss, resilience.
Still… no words hit the page.
I signed up for writing courses. I bought the books, listened to the podcasts, collected beautiful notebooks.
But none of that made me sit down and write.
The Moment I Finally Sat Down
Fast forward again to June 2023.
I sat down.
And I started to write my book.
It took me 18 months of fits and starts, of self-doubt and lots of coffee (and the occasional biscuit. Yeah right, lets say the whole packet of biscoff). But by November 2024, I had 95,000 words and a very rough draft.
I thought I’d be satisfied.
I thought, Well, I said I’d write a book, and look at me, I did it!
But… who was I kidding?
That was never the end of the dream.
Of course I wanted to see it published.
And that, my friend, opens a whole new can of worms. Because now it’s about editing.
It’s about rewriting.
It’s about reviewing how I see myself.
Am I really a writer?
I don’t have the answer to that today. Maybe I never will.
But here’s what I do know:
Dreams don’t expire.
They don’t have use-by dates, even if they get a little dusty or morph into something you never quite expected.
And sometimes, it takes decades to realise that life wasn’t getting in the way at all.
Life was shaping me into the woman who was ready to sit down and write.
Living With a Dream That Feels Far Away
But here’s the tricky part about holding onto a dream for years—sometimes decades.
You have to figure out how to live with it inside you, even when it feels like you’re not getting any closer.
And that’s not always easy.
There were years—long stretches—when the disappointment was heavy.
Despondency would sneak in, whispering, You’ll never get there.
I watched other people chase their dreams, finish their books, publish their stories, and I cheered for them (mostly). But there was a quiet ache in my chest, a weight I carried in private. I felt stuck, like I was standing on the platform while everyone else was on the train, waving as it left the station.
But alongside the disappointment, there was still excitement.
A flicker.
A stubborn, persistent spark.
Some days, I could feel the dream glowing softly in the background, waiting patiently for me to pick it up again. Other days, it felt like it was shouting, Oi! Are you ever going to do something about me?
And then there was the fear.
Oh, the fear.
Fear of failing.
Fear of what people would think.
Fear of starting and not finishing.
Fear of finishing and it not being any good.
Fear of wanting it too much.
I managed it all in the only ways I knew how:
A lot of journalling.
A lot of long conversations with myself in my head.
And honestly? A lot of ignoring how I really felt.
I told myself, One day. One day I’ll write that book.
And for a while, that was enough to keep the dream alive without demanding too much from me.
But here’s what I’ve learned:
You can carry a dream quietly, in your pocket, for as long as you need to.
It won’t leave you.
It might change shape.
It might sit quietly while you’re busy living the rest of your life—raising kids, working jobs, navigating chronic illness, menopause, marriage dramas and the like, all whilst figuring out who the hell you are now.
But it’s there.
And it’s waiting for you to be ready.
How Did I Know It Was Finally Time to Start?
Honestly?
Because I couldn’t not.
I finally had the time, and whether we like it or not, timing is everything. (I’ll explore that properly in the next blog because there’s a lot to say about the right time vs. waiting for the right time.) But for now, I’ll tell you this: I was so tired of feeling disappointed in myself.
That word—disappointed—really did me in.
When I was a kid, I got myself into all kinds of awkward situations. The kind that ended with a wooden spoon, an angry parent, or both. And yet, nothing—nothing—was ever as bad as hearing, “I’m so disappointed in you.”
Ouch.
Cue the guilt. The shame. The stomach-clenching dread that only a sensitive, big-hearted kid can understand.
And somewhere along the way, as I got older, I started saying it to myself.
I started becoming my own disappointed parent, frowning and wagging the finger:
I’m so disappointed in you.
You said you were going to write that book. Why haven’t you?
Why are you still stuck?
Let me tell you, that kind of self-talk can be brutal.
But here’s where it got interesting.
That old familiar feeling sparked something I didn’t quite expect: my inner child did the biggest eye roll imaginable.
She crossed her arms and said, “You know what? You can’t shame me into writing a book.” And for a long while she didn’t, just to prove a point, even if the only person it hurt was me.
And then she sat down at the desk, flipped open the laptop, and started typing—if only to prove the voice wrong.
Classic Oppositional Defiance Disorder.
I love that they have a name for a behaviour I’ve been rocking since about 1972.
Tell me I have to do something, and I’ll drag my feet.
Tell me I can’t, or imply I’m not good enough, and I’ll move mountains just to prove you wrong.
Apparently, sometimes you have to weaponise your inner rebel to get the dream off the ground.
The Truth About Timing
And when that time comes, you won’t need guilt or shame to get you there.
You’ll move because you’re ready.
And because your inner rebel—the one who’s rolled her eyes at disappointment a thousand times—is quietly saying,
“Watch me.”
So, if you’ve been carrying a dream around for years, and you’re waiting for the perfect moment…
Sometimes, it’s less about waiting and more about timing.
When the timing is right, you’ll know.
Because you won’t be able to not do the thing you’ve been dreaming of.
“When the time is right, you just know. And when you know, there’s no stopping you.”
— Unknown
