Hello ,

I need to go a little deeper with you.

The response to the Valentine's Day newsletter stopped me in my tracks. 

Your emails. Your messages. The quiet “me too.” The vulnerability. The honesty. So many of you said it validated something you've been silently carrying, the longing, the hope, the questions that don’t always get spoken out loud.

So here I am, taking that as an invitation.

I am a lover girl in waiting.

Not theoretically. Not as a concept. In real life. And it took me time to admit that first to myself, then to you.

Wanting love is not a weakness.

Longing for partnership is not desperation.

Desiring connection is not evidence that you are unfinished.

Connection is primal. It is wired into our nervous systems. We are biologically and psychologically designed for attachment. From infancy, our bodies regulate through relationships. So why would adulthood suddenly erase that wiring?

Wanting someone to share your life with and wanting to share yourself does not make you less evolved, less strong, less healed, or less whole.

It makes you human.

As a therapist, I rarely get to talk about my own inner world. I hold space for others. I track nervous systems. I help people metabolize grief, trauma, shame, and desire.

But this newsletter gives me permission to be a person with you.

I feel. I ache. I overthink. I question. I get tired of waiting. I have moments of deep peace and moments of doubt.

And I have not figured it out.

I am also a therapy client. There are sessions where I sit on the other side of the room and untangle my own fears about love, timing, expectations, and trust.

Objectively, I know I am great. Somatically, I know I am great. I have built a beautiful life from a 21-year-old woman who came to America with uncertainty, to a 40-year-old woman with a doctorate, a career I love, and a business I built from scratch.

I am proud of myself.

And still... I don’t know what's next.

Being a lover girl in waiting can be disorienting when the rest of your life feels so solid. It comes with questions that don't always get spoken:

If I truly love myself, why do I still want a partnership this badly?

Am I doing something wrong? Is something wrong with me? Has love skipped me?

Let me say this clearly, because I have had to say it to myself:

Self-love and relational desire are not opposites.

You can be deeply self-aware and still long for someone to share your bed, your meals, your ordinary Tuesdays. You can be healed and still hope. You can be whole and still want.

Whenever you have the urge to say, “Look at Alice, she has figured it out,” pause. I haven’t. I am practicing. I am learning. I am trusting. I am surrendering. I am doubting some days and steady on others.

I am doing the best I can. Just like you.

Let your body register this slowly:

My worth is not delayed. Love has not skipped me. I can desire partnership without abandoning myself.

Hope is a practice. And practice implies repetition. Some days, hope feels strong. Some days it is barely a flicker. Some days it is 0%.

On those 0% days, I do not shame myself. I do not turn longing into self-criticism. I do not translate singleness into unworthiness.

I let the ache be there. I breathe. I stay in the moment. And the next day, I practice hope again.

Hope looks like allowing myself to still get excited about meeting someone new. It looks like dressing up for a date, even if the last one didn’t lead anywhere. It looks like refusing to harden my heart just because something didn’t work out.

And if something doesn’t work out? I trust my future self to take care of me.

Not the absence of disappointment. Not the absence of longing. But the refusal to abandon myself inside of it.

If you are a lover girl in waiting or a lover human in waiting, sit here with me.

You are not behind. You are not naive. You are not foolish for believing in partnership. You are not less evolved because you want love.

You are human. And we are still believing in love. All of it.

Even the quiet kind. Even the slow kind. Even the kind that hasn’t arrived yet.

With love and no pretending,

Alice

Therapist. Builder. Lover girl in waiting and okay with that.

If this landed with you, reply and tell me where you are. I read every message.