women who know themselves

around a dinner table, in Mykonos

I’m sitting at a dinner table with women who know themselves. We’re in Mykonos, overlooking the quiet coast in a hilltop Villa. The air is warm and inviting. The Eucalypt trees sway in the audible breeze. Goats sporadically wail in the distance. It adds passion to the landscape. The occasional bird swoops by, having to do minimal work. The breeze carries it through the air merrily. And I’m sitting around a table with women who know themselves.

At first I felt a little uncomfortable. A little ‘what am I doing here?’. A little like I don’t belong. But as each of them gets naked (literally), as we did yoga to the sunrise, as one sat with me when I had a small panic attack (jet lag and sun-provoked), as I continue to hear different parts of their stories, as I lay on one’s bed while she reads my human design chart… I feel my body soften. These are a new breed of women. These are women who have been where I’ve been, who have learnt parts of themselves and chosen to dig deeper. These are women who love themselves, aren’t afraid to be themselves, who hold space for others to be themselves, who know themselves and each other. Instead of morphing into different versions of one another they stay steadfast in their differences. They celebrate themselves and in turn, those around them. Quietly, fuss-free. A silence knowing.

My version of this holiday a few years ago looked very different. It was surface-level conversations about right and wrong. Political issues to sound educated. Old books to sound smart. It was people losing their phones and not being able to pay. It was eating horse steak at a dive bar. It was a messy kitchen. Lots of booze. A feeling of being isolated in a crowded room. But maybe that was just me.

Back then I didn’t feel myself. Those interactions didn’t feel real. The internal crisis I was going through — Should I break up with him? Do I still love him? Is this right? — felt misunderstood, solo, chaotic, foggy… like I needed to pretend everything was okay. But it wasn’t. I wanted to scream because I wanted to cry, but did it in secret. He’d roll his eyes. “What are you crying for?” Oh.

But now! These women look me in the eye when I’m talking. When I’m not feeling 100%. They touch and they hug, they ask questions, they talk about real experiences, they share their sunscreen, their humour, their quirks. They have incredible careers that they’re built for themselves from their uniqueness. They haven’t followed a social media manual on how to be a creative. They’ve carved their own, organic paths. So successfully, that we’ve been brought together.

It’s one of my best friends birthdays. That’s why we’re here. I’ve only known her for ten months but she fits into my every day so smoothly that I can’t imagine what came before. She brought us here. After two years of planning, a thirteen-year business and a lot of hard work, she provided the villa, the place, the people. It was a dream that she had and she did it. So here we are, all together. It feels like some stroke of fate. Something so magical but so effortless, something that I needed more than I think I knew.

Because these women know themselves the way I want to know myself. The way that sometimes I do know myself, but that other people in their twenties don’t often welcome. That insecurities question. These women know themselves in a way that makes me never want to make surface-level small talk in a bar ever again. That make me feel ready to move on from my old life, my external layer, the performance I curated in my early twenties. The dressing for others, the cocaine, the secret sex, the foggy-head feeling. They know themselves in a way that makes me want to drizzle Greek honey onto Greek yoghurt and juicy stone fruit and lie by the pool with no clothes on and breathe.

Because in the silence we really do get to know ourselves. And we are beautiful.