The Woman You Have Worked So Hard to Become Deserves to Be Celebrated

Years ago, when I was working toward becoming a principal, I made myself a promise.

When I got my first principal position, I was going to buy myself a Coach bag.

I knew exactly which one I wanted. I knew what it cost, around $300, which felt like a lot of money to me at the time. But this wasn’t just about a purse. It was going to represent something. I had worked hard for that position, and when I finally earned it, I wanted something that would remind me of what it had taken to get there.

Then I got the job.

And I didn’t buy the bag.

Every time I thought about spending the money, I could think of somewhere else it should go. Maybe my daughter would need something. Maybe we needed something for the house. Maybe I should put it into savings just in case.

We would walk through the mall and pass the Coach store, and my daughter or my then-husband would say, “There’s your bag. Go get it.”

And every time, I found a reason not to.

Until one particularly difficult day during my first year as a principal.

I came home from work exhausted and planning to squeeze in a workout before the day was over. But when I walked into the house, there was a Coach bag sitting on the kitchen table.

My bag.

My daughter and my husband had gone and bought it for me.

And suddenly, the workout didn’t seem quite as important.

Someone else had seen how hard I had worked. Someone else believed this accomplishment deserved to be celebrated.

The interesting part is that even later that evening, I caught myself saying, “Maybe we should take it back.”

They looked at me like I had lost my mind.

The money was there. I had wanted it. I had worked for it. They weren’t taking it back.

Looking back, I realize the problem was never the $300.

The problem was giving myself permission to believe I deserved to be celebrated.

I think a lot of women understand that feeling.

We work hard. We take care of people. We build careers, families, businesses, relationships, and lives. We push through difficult seasons. We reinvent ourselves when necessary. We do things we once weren’t sure we could do.

And then, when something finally works, we move right on to the next thing.

We tell ourselves, That’s what I was supposed to do.

We minimize the accomplishment instead of acknowledging everything it took to get there.

Celebrating yourself doesn’t mean you have an ego. It doesn’t mean you think you’re better than anyone else. It means you are willing to acknowledge the work, courage, sacrifice, discipline, and growth that brought you here.

And maybe that celebration is a beautiful dinner.

Maybe it’s taking the afternoon off.

Maybe it’s booking the trip.

Maybe it’s buying the shoes, the bag, or the piece of jewelry you’ve been looking at because you want something tangible that reminds you of this chapter.

Or maybe it costs absolutely nothing.

Maybe you simply stop long enough to say:

I am proud of the woman I have become.

Because becoming her wasn’t easy.

She has probably walked through things nobody else completely understands. She has made hard decisions. She has failed, adjusted, learned, and tried again. She has shown up on days when showing up required everything she had.

And she is still becoming.

We spend so much time thinking about the woman we want to be next that sometimes we forget to honor the woman standing here today.

So celebrate her.

Celebrate what she has built.

Celebrate what she survived.

Celebrate what she learned.

Celebrate the courage it took to keep going.

And then keep becoming.

Because the woman you have worked so hard to become deserves to be celebrated.

Wear your story. And every once in a while, remember to celebrate the woman who lived it.