Champagne Confessions

We were promised everything.

That was the contract: pursue the degree, ascend the ladder, own your nameplate and your worth. Trade dependence for autonomy. Trade romance for relevance. Trade quiet for conquest. “You can have it all,” they said , and we believed them.

But belief has a shelf life. And somewhere between the 7:00 a.m. calendar invite and the 10:00 p.m. silence of an empty apartment, the cracks start to show. Because what they forgot to mention is this: “having it all” was never about having. It was about doing. Doing everything. Alone. Without rest. Without softness. Without asking if this version of success was ever ours to begin with.

Marriage, motherhood, devotion, these used to be sacred. Then they became suspect. Wanting a husband became anti-feminist. Wanting children? A distraction. We inherited a script that traded aprons for ambition but forgot to edit the third act. And now? We’re exhausted. Decorated. Accomplished. And quietly asking: Was this the prize?

This isn’t a rejection of progress. This is a reckoning. A confrontation with the possibility that freedom, when stripped of intimacy, becomes performance. That independence, without interdependence, becomes isolation.

We are praised for prioritizing work over love. But no one tells us what to do when the corner office grows cold. When birthdays come and go and the only flowers in the room are the ones we bought ourselves. Promotions don’t kiss you goodnight. A title won’t hold your hand at chemo.

And yet, we keep going. Because the modern woman isn’t allowed to pause. We wear “I’m fine” like a badge. We call burnout a phase. We count calories, emails, ovulation windows. We master balance without ever asking who we’re balancing for.

The truth? Empowerment isn’t juggling. It’s discernment. It’s saying no to the script, the scoreboard, the noise. It’s choosing rest over recognition. Love over leverage. Or neither. Or both.

The dilemma isn’t whether we can have it all. It’s whether we ever wanted what “all” was supposed to be.

So no, I don’t want to be everything to everyone. I want to be something to someone. And I want to choose that freely, without apology, without explanation, and without a PowerPoint to prove my worth.

Because maybe the bravest thing a woman can do today… is want less. And mean it.