Que After Dark | Personal Growth
My Life. My Lessons. My Perspective.
I Didn’t Become a Different Woman. I Started Paying Attention.
One of the most interesting things about personal growth is how quickly people begin describing you as somebody different once you stop behaving the way they’ve grown accustomed to. Suddenly, you’re changing, acting funny, being distant, thinking you’re better than everybody, or developing an attitude they don’t particularly appreciate. And sometimes, all you’ve really done is stop agreeing to shit you never wanted to do in the first place.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about that because my own growth hasn’t necessarily involved becoming somebody entirely new. In many ways, it’s been more about recognizing parts of myself that were always there but had become buried beneath expectations, responsibilities, relationships, and the version of me I believed I needed to present to the world.
I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I wanted to become a completely different woman. I started asking questions about the woman I had already become and whether the decisions I was making reflected what I actually wanted from my life.
And let me tell you, that kind of self-examination can be uncomfortable as hell.
It’s easy to identify the ways other people have disappointed us, misunderstood us, or failed to meet our expectations. We can explain what somebody did, why it was wrong, and how their behavior affected us. But growth becomes a different conversation when we have to examine the things we’ve accepted, the patterns we’ve repeated, and the decisions we’ve made while knowing damn well something wasn’t right.
Because sometimes the person you’ve been lying to the longest is yourself.
The Lies We Tell Ourselves to Keep the Peace
I don’t think most of us intentionally wake up and decide we’re going to spend the day being dishonest with ourselves. I think it happens gradually. We learn what makes other people comfortable, what keeps arguments from starting, what maintains relationships, and what allows us to move through life without constantly having to explain or defend our decisions.
Sometimes we call it being understanding. Sometimes we call it compromising, choosing our battles, or being the bigger person. And sometimes those descriptions are absolutely appropriate.
But other times, we’re simply finding more socially acceptable ways to avoid admitting what we already know.
We convince ourselves that something doesn’t bother us because acknowledging it would require a conversation we’re not ready to have. We tell ourselves we’re happy because admitting otherwise would force us to reconsider decisions we’ve invested years into maintaining. We remain available to people who leave us emotionally exhausted because we’ve become accustomed to being the dependable one.
And then we have the nerve to wonder why we’re so damn irritated all the time.
I had to begin recognizing when my willingness to understand everybody else was preventing me from being honest about what I was experiencing. I could recognize somebody’s intentions, understand their circumstances, and appreciate their perspective without pretending that the impact of their behavior didn’t matter to me.
That distinction became important because understanding somebody doesn’t automatically require accepting everything that comes with them.
And being capable of enduring something doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
My Awakening Wasn’t a Pretty Little Transformation
When I talk about my personal awakening, I often return to September 2020 because that experience forced me to reconsider the way I had been living.
After a medical emergency involving severe anemia, a hemoglobin level of four, and three units of blood, I began examining how much of my identity had become connected to responsibilities and expectations. I had spent years being strong, dependable, resourceful, and available, often without questioning how those qualities were affecting my relationship with myself.
That experience didn’t instantly transform me into some enlightened woman who suddenly had all the answers.
Shit, I still had questions I didn’t even know how to ask.
What changed was my willingness to examine things I had previously accepted without much consideration. I started questioning why certain relationships operated the way they did, why I felt responsible for situations that didn’t necessarily belong to me, and why I sometimes experienced guilt simply for considering what I wanted.
I also began reconsidering the expectations I’d developed about marriage, parenting, friendship, employment, and personal success. Some of those beliefs had come from my upbringing, some from experiences, and others from watching how people around me navigated their own lives.
And while I wasn’t necessarily wrong for developing those beliefs, I had to ask whether they still made sense for the woman I was becoming.
There’s a psychological concept called cognitive dissonance, which describes the discomfort we can experience when our beliefs, actions, or decisions conflict with one another.
For example, you can believe you deserve honesty while repeatedly avoiding conversations that require you to be honest. You can say you value peace while remaining involved in circumstances that consistently disturb it. You can believe your needs matter while continuously treating them as less important than everybody else’s.
And the longer those contradictions exist, the easier it can become to create explanations that allow us to continue doing what we’ve always done.
Growth, at least in my experience, has involved becoming more willing to recognize those contradictions instead of finding another damn excuse for them.
Everybody Doesn’t Benefit From Your Self-Awareness
Something else I’ve learned is that personal growth can change the dynamics of relationships even when your intentions aren’t to hurt, reject, or distance yourself from anybody.
When people become accustomed to a particular version of you, they often develop expectations around how you communicate, respond, give, forgive, and participate in their lives. Those expectations may have existed for years without anybody consciously discussing them.
Then you start questioning those patterns.
You become more intentional about your time. You stop responding immediately to every request. You begin saying no without offering a ten-minute explanation. You recognize when a conversation is going nowhere and decide you don’t need to participate simply because somebody wants an argument.
And suddenly, somebody has a problem with your attitude.
Now you’re different.
Well, no shit. I would certainly hope that after forty-something years of living, experiencing, learning, and occasionally making decisions that left me wondering what the hell I was thinking, something about my perspective would have changed.
The expectation that people should remain emotionally and psychologically unchanged throughout their lives has always been interesting to me. We expect children to mature, students to become educated, employees to develop professionally, and businesses to evolve. Yet, when somebody begins changing the way they participate in personal relationships, we sometimes interpret that growth as rejection.
But changing your boundaries doesn’t automatically mean you no longer care about somebody.
Sometimes it means you’re learning how to care about them without abandoning yourself.
And sometimes, if we’re being real, it means you’ve finally recognized that a particular relationship requires more from you than you’re willing to continue giving.
Both can be true.
I Had to Stop Confusing Familiarity With Alignment
One of the more difficult parts of growth has been recognizing how easily being familiar can influence my decisions.
When you’ve spent years behaving a particular way, that behavior can begin to feel like part of who you are. You develop routines, establish expectations, and build relationships around beliefs that may have made sense during an earlier season of your life.
But circumstances change. Experiences change us. Our understanding of ourselves changes.
And sometimes the things that once felt comfortable begin to feel restrictive.
I had to become willing to examine whether certain decisions reflected my actual desires or simply me being familiar with making them. Was I maintaining something because I genuinely wanted it in my life, or because I had invested so much time into it that the thought of doing something different felt uncomfortable?
Was I being patient because patience was appropriate, or was I using patience as an excuse to avoid acknowledging what wasn’t working?
Was I keeping the peace, or was I consistently sacrificing my own peace so somebody else wouldn’t have to experience discomfort?
Those aren’t always easy questions to answer, particularly when the answers involve people you love, relationships you’ve invested in, or identities you’ve spent years developing.
And that’s where I think we sometimes misunderstand growth.
It isn’t always about learning something new. Sometimes it’s about becoming honest enough to acknowledge something you’ve known for a long damn time.
Choosing Myself Came With Some Uncomfortable Decisions
I wish I could say that once I began understanding myself differently, every decision became easier and everybody around me celebrated my growth.
That would make for a beautiful story.
It would also be some bullshit.
Becoming more self-aware doesn’t automatically eliminate guilt, uncertainty, disappointment, or the emotional attachments we’ve developed over time. You can recognize that something needs to change and still struggle with the process of changing it.
You can understand that a boundary is necessary and still feel uncomfortable enforcing it. You can recognize that a relationship no longer serves you in the same way and still care deeply about the person involved.
And sometimes you can make a decision that feels right for your future while grieving the version of your life that decision requires you to leave behind.
I’ve had to learn that choosing myself doesn’t guarantee that everybody will agree with my choices. It doesn’t mean my decisions won’t affect other people, and it certainly doesn’t excuse me from considering those effects.
But it does mean I have to stop treating other people’s comfort as the final authority over my life.
For a long time, I was comfortable being the woman who could adapt to almost anything. I knew how to adjust my expectations, navigate difficult personalities, and keep moving regardless of what I was experiencing.
Those abilities served me in many ways, but I eventually had to recognize that constantly adjusting myself could become another form of avoiding the truth.
Because there is a difference between being adaptable and repeatedly making yourself uncomfortable so everybody else can remain comfortable.
And once I recognized that difference, some decisions became impossible to keep avoiding.
I Started Remembering What I Actually Wanted
During my awakening, I remember envisioning a life where I could wake up and write about my own experiences. I wanted to share my thoughts, talk about the things I’d lived through, and possibly help somebody see their own circumstances from a different perspective.
It wasn’t some elaborate corporate business plan with a thirty-page presentation, financial projections, and a professionally designed organizational chart.
Hell, in my mind, I was just going to wake up, sip coffee, write some shit, and somehow make a living doing it.
Simple enough, right?
Except life has a funny way of reminding you that having a vision and understanding how to build it are two completely different experiences.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand how that idea might develop or what creating a business around my voice would eventually require. I simply knew that I wanted the freedom to express myself and use my experiences in a way that meant something beyond the circumstances in which they originally occurred.
And now, as I continue building BlanQ Canvas, writing books, developing Que After Dark, and creating opportunities around the things I genuinely enjoy, I can recognize pieces of that original vision beginning to take shape.
Not because everything has magically fallen into place. There are still financial responsibilities, difficult decisions, uncertainty, and plenty of moments when I have to figure things out as I go.
But the woman who once imagined making a living by writing about her experiences is now actively building something around those experiences.
And there is something meaningful about recognizing that.
Sometimes we’re so focused on what hasn’t happened yet that we overlook the things we’re already experiencing that once existed only in our imagination.
I didn’t need to become a completely different woman to begin pursuing that life.
I needed to become more honest about what I wanted.
Growth Didn’t Make Me Better Than Anybody
I think it’s important to address another misconception about personal growth.
Becoming more self-aware doesn’t make you superior to people who haven’t reached the same conclusions. It doesn’t automatically make your decisions correct, your perspective more valuable, or your behavior beyond criticism.
And it damn sure doesn’t mean you’ve reached a point where you no longer have anything to learn.
I still have moments when my emotions influence my decisions. I still have expectations that deserve examination and reactions that make more sense after I’ve had time to reflect. There are times when I recognize a pattern immediately and other times when I don’t fully understand what I’m doing until I’ve already participated in the very behavior I thought I had outgrown.
Because awareness doesn’t automatically mean mastery.
Sometimes you know better and still have to work on doing better.
The difference for me is that I’m becoming more willing to acknowledge those moments without pretending they don’t exist.
I don’t need to present myself as a perfectly healed woman who has overcome every challenge, released every attachment, and developed some magical ability to remain unbothered by everything.
Baby, please.
I’m human. Some shit still gets on my nerves. Some people still test my patience. And occasionally, the woman I’m becoming has to have a very serious conversation with the woman I’ve been.
But I can appreciate that process without believing every mistake erases the progress I’ve made.
Growth isn’t a personality transplant. It’s an ongoing process of recognizing your patterns, reconsidering your beliefs, accepting responsibility for your decisions, and allowing yourself to make different choices when your understanding changes.
The Woman I’m Becoming Was Always Somewhere in Me
When I look back over the different seasons of my life, I don’t necessarily see a collection of completely different women. I see a woman who learned how to survive different circumstances, fulfill different responsibilities, and become what she believed each season required.
There was the woman who learned to be dependable, the woman who developed her professional abilities, the woman who prioritized her family, and the woman who became so accustomed to being strong that she almost forgot what it meant to be vulnerable.
And now there’s the woman who is learning how to consider herself in the decisions she makes.
I don’t hate the earlier versions of me. Even when I question certain choices, I understand that those versions were operating with the knowledge, beliefs, and experiences available to them at the time.
But understanding my past doesn’t require me to continue repeating it.
I can appreciate what a particular season taught me without remaining emotionally attached to the person I had to be in order to survive it.
I can acknowledge that certain relationships, expectations, and decisions once made sense without pretending they must continue making sense forever.
And I can accept that growing into a different understanding of myself may require uncomfortable conversations, difficult choices, and a willingness to disappoint people who preferred the version of me that was easier for them to understand.
Because at this point in my life, I’m no longer interested in convincing myself that something feels right simply because admitting otherwise would make things complicated.
Life is already complicated enough without me participating in my own damn confusion.
I haven’t become a completely different woman.
I’ve simply become less willing to lie to myself about the woman I am, the things I want, and the life I’m choosing to create.
And perhaps that’s the most meaningful part of my growth.
Not that I’ve finally figured everything out.
But that I’m no longer pretending I have to remain who I was simply because that’s the version everybody remembers.
A Little More From Que
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about personal growth is that self-awareness isn’t the same as self-perfection. Recognizing your patterns doesn’t mean you’ll never repeat them, and understanding the reasons behind your behavior doesn’t automatically change how you respond.
Psychologically, our beliefs and behaviors are influenced by conditioning, experiences, relationships, and the identities we’ve developed over time. As we gain new experiences, we may begin questioning things that once felt completely normal. That process can create discomfort because changing our behavior sometimes requires us to reconsider the very beliefs that helped us navigate earlier seasons of our lives.
In THE F*CK THEM THEORY, I explore five seasons of personal transformation: Conditioned, Attached, Disconnected, Awakened, and Aligned. Those seasons reflect my understanding of how we can move from living according to expectations we’ve absorbed toward making decisions that feel more consistent with who we’re becoming.
I’m not suggesting that everybody needs to leave a relationship, quit a job, relocate, or announce some dramatic transformation on social media. Sometimes growth begins with something much quieter.
Sometimes it begins when you finally admit that a situation you’ve been defending doesn’t make you happy. Sometimes it begins when you recognize that you have been saying yes out of guilt rather than desire. And sometimes it begins when you stop asking everybody else what they think you should do and start considering what you genuinely want.
Because the goal isn’t to become somebody the world finds more impressive. It’s to develop enough self-awareness and honesty that you no longer have to keep performing a version of yourself that doesn’t feel true.
If you’re beginning to question the beliefs, relationships, and patterns that have shaped your life, my book THE F*CK THEM THEORY, available on Amazon, takes you deeper into the personal experiences behind my awakening.
You can discover more of my books, writing, and upcoming projects through Que Writes and explore the other departments of BlanQ Canvas.
That’s My Perspective. What’s Yours?
Have you ever reached a point in your life when you realized you had been convincing yourself that you were happy, comfortable, or satisfied with something you had actually outgrown?
And when you finally acknowledged the truth, did you make a change, or are you still trying to figure out what that change should look like?
Let’s talk about that shit in the comments. Sometimes the hardest person to be honest with is the one staring back at us in the mirror.
Until the next perspective,
Que. 🩷
My Life. My Lessons. My Perspective.
Leave a Reply