Your Dreams Evolve With You

Have you heard anyone mention "2026 is the new 2016" this month?

This nostalgic trend has been all over my social media for the past few weeks, and it has prompted me to do a lot of self-reflecting--considering who I was in 2016 versus who I am today in 2026.

2016 was a major year for me in terms of milestones. It's the year I married my husband and the year I got to travel abroad for the first time. 

But in terms of where I was emotionally and mentally on a personal level, 2016 is not a year I look back on fondly. 

In 2016, I felt very stuck in my professional life after following a career path that I chose for all the wrong reasons. My confidence and self-concept were extremely low. I had given up my dreams to follow what I assumed to be an admirably logical adult life. 

I didn't want to be a model anymore. Honestly, the death of that dream at this time in my life was a tender mercy. I was in no mental, emotional, or physical condition to actually chase the dream of becoming an international model. I was spared the cruelty of wanting something I couldn't have.

Gradually, I started to right myself. I left my job; I started being creative again. I opened myself up to the vulnerability of emotional healing and mental growth. 

It was a painful process--one that was also pushed along by my Saturn Return--but it was necessary for me to become the right person for the dream I was destined to have. 

The lifecycle of a dream can be different for everyone. For my dream, it was born when I was a teenager, I became the wrong person for it, so it died. Then I healed myself, my dream came back to life, and I've been chasing it ever since.

It could be that you've had a similar experience with your dream as I did with mine, or perhaps your initial dream evolved and led you to a much better dream. Either way, there is a degree of fluidity to our dreams.

I believe that dreams meet us where we are in life based on what we can handle personally at the time. They'll still challenge us, but the dreams we have will never be impossible to attain based on our current capacity to chase them. 

I'm grateful my dream was flexible. There's no way I could've been an international model when I was postpartum or when my family was moving or when my husband was changing jobs. That wasn't the right time. But now is the right time. 

I know it's the right time because I have been working all week as an international model in Milan. 

Real work--real bookings. 

I have never worked multiple days in a row when I was modeling in Utah. I was lucky to get a booking once every few months. 

I am making a conscious effort to be present during this experience. I'm living in my dream come true. That is something so beautiful. 

The time it took to get to this point was well worth it, the flexibility of my dream over the years was so gracious. 

I know that in the coming years, my dream will have to keep evolving and changing because I am going to keep growing and learning. Who knows, maybe in another couple years international modeling won't be right for me anymore, the dream will take on a new shape that best suits me based on the phase of life I'm in. 

Maybe I'll move again, maybe I'll have another baby, maybe I'll go back to school--who knows. 

What I do know is this: My dream will always be what is right for me at the time, and if I follow it, I will end up exactly where I'm meant to be.