Lady Lady, it’s okay to change
Soundtrack: Lady Lady x Olivia Dean
February 6, 2025
I had just stood up out of the stylist chair and caught a full-length glimpse of myself in the mirrors. I had left straight after work, a weekday appointment, and drove almost an hour to try this new stylist. I booked a silk press, and anyone knows that if you’re getting a silk press, you can’t just let anyone play in your head. Hence the literal lengths I was willing to go through and drive to get in her chair.
Anyway, we chatted, she did her thing, and then I was done. It was gorgeous. As I stood up, I saw myself and I was taken aback. Not necessarily at my hair because I’ve had a good silk press before, but at the reflection in the mirror. As I stated, I had just come from work, so I had beige wide legs slacks on paired with a chocolate long sleeve turtleneck, matching belt with gold hardware and classic jewelry— all the things.
I looked good, but I also looked like my mom.
I had watched my mom dress for work every day for years of my life. I was used to the polished business casual attire, with neat hair, and matching jewelry.
Though I was familiar with the look, I wasn’t prepared to see myself in the same way.
I shook it off, basked in my new hair and drove home. When I arrived home, I started dinner, still fitted in my work attire. It happened again. A strange realization that I felt like my mom. For some reason I felt like I had crossed over a threshold of adulthood that I could not put into words.
I wrestled with this feeling for days. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I told God, “I feel like an adult, but what does it mean to be an adult?”. To me, I dealt with this fear that it was going to be boring or sad, like I had come to the end of all that was funky and fun, all the things that I loved about life and myself weren’t allowed into adulthood.
Mind you, I was 26 at the time so legally I was already an adult, but something felt different.
Fast forward through months of questions and conversations around career, motherhood, and identity.
October 3, 2025 — Nashville, TN
There are suitcases open all over the floor making a maze across the hotel carpet. My best friends and I are all pulling things out, making trips back and forth from the bathroom to the bedroom. Olivia Dean’s “Art of Loving” album is playing loudly on the tv as we shout from room to room. I’m sitting on the bed waiting for my turn in the bathroom and the music video for Lady, Lady plays. Mind you, I had heard the song before, because my friends and I had adopted Olivia as one of our own recently. This was my first time seeing the music video though and it really helped me hear the story Olivia was trying to tell.
I started to tear up. Here I was, full of ellipses about who I was now, and God gave me a soundtrack to my story.
For the first time, I didn’t see it as the end of something, but the beginning. I saw something beautiful in the change. She was growing.
October 15, 2025
My little sister is like obsessed with personality tests. If you’re reading this Sissy, you know this to be true. I hope you don’t try to deny it. She sent me a test that measured your values. Mind you, I strongly dislike these tests because I find them so hard to answer (I somewhat agree or disagree with everything and could possibly be all of these). I took it for her though, and when I received my results, I nodded my head. Accurate…or was it?
While I was taking it, I found myself mentally responding with 2s and 3s where I would have previously rated myself the 7s and 8s. For example, there were questions that prioritized adventure and novelty over stability and calm and honestly for the first time in years, I felt as if adventure was not my highest priority, or at least not in the same way. Instead of country hopping, and being consumed with a life on the go, I loved the idea of staying in the same city, building, and being settled.
I ignored those new feelings though and answered as I always would. After reading the results, I wondered if I had answered authentically based on how I truly felt now or based off how I perceived myself to be. It was a strange moment. Many of my friends and family know that traveling and being immersed in new environments all around the world has always been synonymous with Kyndal. It felt weird to no longer want those things as much as I did before. One part of me wondered if I was losing myself, and the other part realized that I still satisfied my desire for unique experiences, varied people, and new places and experiences, just in a different way.
October 29, 2025 — my driveway, in the car (where the best revelations happen)
I was inspired. My heart was reconnected to something the seasons had put down to rest. I followed the Holy Spirit on a neighborhood walk, and we just talked, picking up fallen leaves on the way. Seems symbolic now—the changing of the leaves in autumn, yellows, red, orange, and brown. We talked and he spoke and I listened. I love him. I love how he encourages us to ask and to bring our thoughts to him, how he loves to listen to what we say. I also love how he talks back and gives guidance. I love how he knows our heart and is the ultimate storyteller.
We finished up our chatting, and I got in the car to talk to my therapist. My real therapist lol. The conversation circled around shame and evolution. I was unpacking all the ways I haven’t been being the person I was for so long and thought I was supposed to still be. I’ll drop the Holy Spirit gems I got from it here:
“You’ve held yourself to this standard of being for so long. That’s not who you are, that’s not why I (God) love you.”
A relationship with God isn’t any less because it doesn't look the same as it did in a previous season.
I’m evolving and it’s him leading it.
Stewarding all the things God has entrusted with your hands is worship.
We must give ourselves permission to discover who we are without shame and give ourselves space to shift and enter what God has for us next.
This is the next chapter, and it was always the next chapter! Don’t freak out.
It was so transformational. I wrote in my journal:
“I feel like I’m 14 again, where I don’t have any pretense with you! I just am and we just are! I feel free <3. You are with me as I am!”
I didn’t even realize that I had defined myself by so many things for so long, that I thought if I wasn't those things then I wasn’t who God wanted me to be.
Later that night, I randomly had the desire to listen to the Encanto soundtrack and the song, “What Else Can I Do?” came on and I just smiled and teared up again.
There’s more than what I know and who I know myself to be! <3
