The Woman in the Mirror

On the strange distance between who we know ourselves to be and the woman looking back at us.

It happened on the way to physiotherapy. I was walking: cream linen trousers, a matching linen blouse, black trainers, hair in a ponytail, glasses on, and I caught my reflection in a shop window.

For a split second, I stopped.

And I didn’t recognise her.

Not in a dramatic way, or in a crisis way, just a quiet, slightly jarring moment of: “Who is that?” The woman in the glass and the woman I know myself to be felt, in that instant, like two completely different people.

My first instinct was to say she looked masculine. And I want to be careful with that word, because there’s nothing wrong with looking masculine. But it wasn’t how I experience myself on the inside, and the gap between those two things, between the interior woman and the exterior one, was what caught me off guard.

I didn’t feel attractive. I didn’t feel like myself. I looked older than I imagined. This wasn’t how I wanted to present myself to the world.

I missed feeling feminine.

The feeling stayed with me for the rest of the walk, and long after.

As I sat with it later, I realised the discomfort wasn’t really about the outfit. Or my glasses. Or my hair. Or even ageing; I’ve made peace with that. Every birthday feels like a privilege. I have no desire to look twenty-five again, and I mean that genuinely, not as something I’m supposed to say.

It was about something deeper than any of that.

I have spent most of my life experiencing myself through doing, becoming, achieving, carrying and holding things together: being the capable one, the responsible one, the woman who shows up, manages and doesn’t let things fall apart. That mode of existing became so habitual that I stopped noticing it. It was simply what I was.

This year, after slowing down more dramatically than I ever have - surgery, healing, the enforced stillness of recovery - I’ve been doing something different.

Not striving.

Living.

And in the quiet of that, voices that used to be whispers have become loud enough to hear. One of them said, simply and without cruelty: “I don’t recognise the woman in the mirror.”

Here’s the strange thing, though.

I know exactly who I am.

I recognise myself when I’m writing; when the words come from somewhere true, and I don’t second-guess them. When I’m baking something that fills our home with warmth. When I’m curating a corner of my home into something beautiful. When I’m cooking for someone I love. When I’m sitting with a cup of chai listening to Frank Sinatra, candles lit, completely content.

I recognise myself in every conversation where someone feels safe, seen, heard and held.

She is here. She has never been missing.

The woman isn’t lost. It’s my reflection that feels unfamiliar. And that is a genuinely different problem, one I haven’t known how to hold until now.

I’ve been thinking about why that gap exists.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that certain parts of me weren’t entirely safe to inhabit. Being deeply alive, magnetic, playful, unapologetic and fully present in my own body. I don’t know exactly where that learning came from: childhood, relationships, years of being the responsible one, the accumulated weight of a life lived mostly in service of what needed to be done. Probably all of it, woven together in ways I’ll spend years still untangling.

But I know those parts of me quietly stepped aside.

And I know, because there have been seasons of my life where they emerged - unexpectedly, naturally, without performance - that they are still here. I have felt what it’s like to be confident in my own skin. Magnetic. Present. Unapologetically myself. Not because I was trying to be those things, but simply because I was.

Those parts didn’t disappear; they just need different conditions to come forward.

What I understood walking home from physiotherapy is that my next chapter isn’t about creating a new woman.

She’s already here.

It’s about giving her space to re-emerge.

And that changes the question entirely. It’s no longer “How do I become more feminine, more attractive, more recognisable to myself?” It’s something gentler and more interesting than that.

It’s: “How do I build a relationship with the woman in the mirror?”

Not because I don’t love myself; I do. Not because I don’t know who I am; I do, more clearly than ever. But because the woman I know internally and the woman I see externally haven’t quite been properly introduced yet. I’ve spent years building a relationship with everything she does, everything she creates, everything she believes. But not with her reflection.

That relationship has been quietly neglected for a long time.

I’m not going to turn this into a project.

I’ve learned this year that the things that matter most don’t respond well to being forced. Answers arrive when I’m calm enough to receive them, not when I’m pursuing them with a notebook and a plan.

So I’ll stay curious instead. I’ll notice the moments when I feel most like myself: alive, present, recognisable, and I’ll pay attention to what conditions created them. I’ll continue living slowly. I’ll continue building the life that supports me. I’ll let this unfold at the pace it needs to.

And perhaps, somewhere along the way, I’ll catch my reflection again.

On some ordinary day. Without trying. Without analysing.

And instead of the slight jolt of not quite recognising her, I’ll simply smile.

And quietly think: “There you are!”

Because that’s what I think this next chapter is really about: not becoming someone new, but finally recognising the woman I’ve been becoming all along.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective