Just Julia

When I was in high school, my father used to make me an offer.

If I got into medical school, one of the good public universities in Brazil, he would buy me a car.

Any car I wanted.

He made the same offer to my sister.

Neither of us became doctors.

For years, this was simply one of those family stories. Something you remember and laugh about.

Lately, I haven’t been laughing about it.

Because at 38 years old, I have found myself thinking something I am almost embarrassed to admit:

Maybe I should have become a doctor.

Not because I suddenly want to practise medicine.

I don’t.

But because somewhere in my imagination lives this other Julia.

Doctor Julia.

She knows what she is.

She wakes up in the morning and doesn’t need to explain herself.

Someone asks what she does and she has an answer.

I’m a doctor.

Three words.

An identity.

And lately, I envy her.

—

I’ve had a career.

I’ve worked internationally. I’ve built partnerships. I’ve negotiated. I’ve sold. I’ve managed markets. I’ve sat in meetings and made presentations and carried targets and built relationships.

I’ve been good at many of those things.

But if you ask me whether they are me, something inside me says no.

I don’t want my next chapter to be another version of the last one.

I don’t want to choose another title simply because I’m qualified for it.

I don’t want to keep becoming whatever fits most neatly onto my CV.

And that leaves me with a surprisingly difficult question.

If I don’t want to be what I’ve been, who am I?

I genuinely don’t know.

If something in this story felt familiar, you’re welcome to stay. Every week, I write for women figuring out who they’re becoming next.

—

Maybe this is the strange consequence of living many lifetimes in one life.

I’ve been so many Julias.

There was the Brazilian girl from a small town.

The exchange student in New Zealand.

The university girl who worked part-time and partied with her friends and felt completely free.

The international student.

The girl who moved to Milan.

The intern in New York.

The career woman.

The wife.

The mother.

And somewhere between countries, languages, relationships, motherhood, ambition and becoming an adult, I became extremely good at adapting.

Brazilian Julia tried hard to belong in the small world she grew up in.

New Zealand Julia discovered what it felt like to belong somewhere completely new.

Italian Julia spent years learning how to belong in a world that didn’t always feel like hers.

Professional Julia became very good at belonging wherever she was needed.

But lately, I’ve started wondering:

Which one of them learned how to belong to herself?

I don’t know that I ever did.

I talk about authenticity a lot lately.

Authenticity.

Authenticity.

Authenticity.

I think perhaps I repeat the word because I’m desperately trying to understand what it feels like.

Because there’s a contradiction inside me that I don’t quite know how to reconcile.

I want to be visible.

And I’m terrified of being seen.

I want to build something of my own.

And immediately I imagine what everyone will think if it fails.

My parents.

My friends.

My husband.

People who knew previous versions of me.

People who might look at whatever I create and think:

Who does she think she is?

And perhaps the more frightening question is the one I ask myself:

Who do I think I am?

What authority do I have to build something different?

What expertise do I have outside the world I’ve already worked in?

Why would anybody listen to me?

There she is again.

The girl who didn’t make the list.

Older now.

Better dressed.

More travelled.

With a CV and a family and almost four decades of evidence that she can figure difficult things out.

And still, somewhere inside, asking:

Am I enough to do this?

—

I wish I could tell you that all the self-development work has given me the answer.

It hasn’t.

I’ve journaled.

I’ve meditated.

I’ve listened to podcasts.

I’ve learned about energy and beliefs and childhood patterns and the strange ways we carry old versions of ourselves into completely new rooms.

I’ve become much better at identifying my wounds.

I’m just not entirely sure what to do with them.

I can see the pattern.

I can name it.

I can tell you where some of it probably began.

And then tomorrow morning I wake up…

and I’m still me.

Maybe that’s the part of transformation we don’t talk about enough.

Understanding yourself and becoming yourself are not the same thing.

There is an uncomfortable distance between the two.

I think I’m standing somewhere inside it.

—

And perhaps that’s also why my relationship with work feels so complicated right now.

I could choose something familiar.

Something respectable.

Something I know how to do.

Put another title after my name.

Build another version of Professional Julia.

And maybe I would be very good at it.

But I am frightened that I would wake up a few years from now asking exactly the same question.

Is this really me?

Because I don’t just want a job anymore.

I want to build.

I want to create.

I want business and ambition and financial independence.

I want beautiful hotels and great clothes and planes to places I’ve never seen.

I want to feel powerful in a room.

And I also want depth.

I want conversations that change something inside people.

I want to understand why we become who we become and whether we’re allowed to become somebody else.

For a long time, I thought those desires contradicted one another.

Maybe a meaningful woman had to reject material things.

Maybe a spiritual woman couldn’t also be ambitious.

Maybe someone who wanted to help people had to become softer, quieter, less interested in success.

But that isn’t me either.

I don’t want to choose between depth and ambition.

I want both.

Maybe authenticity isn’t choosing which version is acceptable.

Maybe it’s finally having the courage to admit that all of them belong.

—

The problem is, I still don’t know what to do with that information.

I don’t know what company I will build.

I don’t know whether I’ll build one at all.

I don’t know whether my next chapter will be something I haven’t discovered yet, or some strange intersection of all of them.

And for someone who desperately wants clarity, this is incredibly uncomfortable.

I want the roadmap.

I want someone to say:

Julia, this is what you’re supposed to do.

Maybe that’s why Doctor Julia has been visiting my thoughts lately.

She represents the road not taken.

But more than that, she represents certainty.

Study this.

Become this.

Call yourself this.

Live this life.

There is something seductive about a life with a name.

But when I really think about it, the most extraordinary parts of my life never came from following the obvious road.

They came when there wasn’t one.

—

So maybe this time I don’t need another identity handed to me.

Maybe I need to build one.

And maybe, for the first time, I don’t want to build it around a profession.

I want to know the woman underneath it.

What does she care about when nobody is applauding?

What would she create if she wasn’t worried about looking ridiculous?

What does she want when she stops choosing what will make sense to everyone else?

What makes her lose track of time?

What makes her feel alive?

What does she believe?

What is she willing to stand for?

Who is Julia when there is nothing after her name?

I don’t know yet.

And perhaps this Substack is becoming the place where I find out.

Not as someone teaching from the other side.

But as a woman standing right in the middle of it.

—

So this time, I don’t have a beautiful conclusion.

I have a question.

Actually, I have many.

And if you’re somewhere in this strange space too, accomplished enough to have built a life, but honest enough to admit that some of it no longer feels like yours, I would genuinely like to hear from you.

How did you find yourself again?

Not your next job.

Not your next title.

Not the version of you that looked good when you introduced yourself at a dinner table.

You.

How did you know when you had found her?

Because I have lived many lifetimes already.

And I have a feeling another one is beginning.

This time, though, I don’t want to simply become whoever the next chapter requires me to be.

I want to meet the woman …

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how many lifetimes can fit inside one life.

When I look back, I don’t see one version of myself.

I see many.

There was a little girl growing up in a small town in Brazil, convinced the world was only as big as the streets she knew.

Then there was the exchange student who boarded a plane for the very first time and discovered that the world was infinitely bigger than she had imagined.

The university student in New Zealand, working part-time while learning how to build a future she couldn’t yet see.

The young woman who packed her bags again and moved to Italy to study.

The intern who walked through the doors of the United Nations in New York wondering whether someone had made a mistake by choosing her.

The professional.

The wife.

The mother.

Every version of me believed she had finally arrived.

Until life quietly whispered,

“There’s another version of you waiting.”

For a long time, I thought life was about finding myself.

Now I think it’s been about meeting myself…

again,

and again,

and again.

Not because I planned those transformations.

Because every few years, life placed a small, unfamiliar door in front of me.

And instead of waiting until I felt completely ready…

I walked through it.

Not with certainty.

With curiosity.

When I was seventeen, I couldn’t possibly have imagined that one exchange programme would become New Zealand.

That New Zealand would become university.

That university would become Italy.

That Italy would become love.

That love would become family.

That one unfamiliar decision would quietly rewrite the geography of my entire life.

None of it was visible from where I stood.

The only thing I could see…

was the next step.

I’ve never had the map.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever needed it.

Every life I’ve loved began with something surprisingly ordinary.

One conversation.

One application.

One suitcase.

One plane ticket.

One unfamiliar step that only years later revealed itself as the beginning of another lifetime.

Looking back, it all feels beautifully connected.

Living it

it felt like walking through fog.

And maybe that’s what faith has always looked like.

Not seeing the whole road.

Just believing the next step deserves to be taken.

I’ve stood here before.

Not in the same city.

Not at the same age.

But in this exact feeling.

The feeling of standing between a life that no longer fits…

and another that hasn’t introduced itself yet.

I know this place.

It has met me before.

Before New Zealand.

Before Italy.

Before New York.

Before becoming a wife.

Before becoming a mother.

Every lifetime I’ve lived has quietly begun here.

In the uncomfortable space where one chapter has already ended…

and the next one hasn’t yet found the words to introduce itself.

If I’m completely honest…

This isn’t the chapter I thought I’d be living.

Some parts of my life have asked me to let go before I was ready.

Others haven’t introduced themselves yet.

For a while, I thought that feeling meant something had gone wrong.

Now I wonder if it simply means another lifetime is beginning.

Because every version of myself that I cherish today…

was once someone I couldn’t yet imagine becoming.

Maybe we spend too much of our lives asking ourselves,

“Who am I?”

Lately, I’ve been asking a different question.

Who am I becoming?

Because if life has taught me anything, it’s this:

The biggest transformations are rarely loud.

They usually begin on an ordinary day.

Disguised as a conversation.

An application.

A suitcase.

A plane ticket.

A decision that doesn’t make complete sense yet.

Most of the extraordinary moments in my life never felt extraordinary while I was living them.

They felt uncertain.

Uncomfortable.

Sometimes even impossible.

Only years later did I realise they had quietly become the moments that changed everything.

So I don’t need all the answers anymore.

I don’t need the map.

I don’t even need certainty.

I only need enough courage to take the next unfamiliar step.

Maybe that’s all I’ve ever needed.

Maybe we only get one life.

But if we’re willing…

we get to live many of them.

If you’ve read this far, let me leave you with one thought.

Maybe the question isn’t how many years we get to live.

Maybe it’s…

How many lifetimes do we still have the courage to live inside this one?

As for me…

I have a feeling another lifetime is already beginning.

I just haven’t met her yet.

And somehow…

that fills me with more excitement than fear.

Just Julia

If something in this story felt familiar, you’re welcome to stay. Every week, I write for women figuring out who they’re becoming next.

Prefer to listen? Just Julia is also a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

When I was twelve, the boys in my class had a tradition.

Every so often, they would write a list.

The ten prettiest girls.

The paper would travel from desk to desk.

Someone would add a name.

Someone would cross another out.

People debated who deserved to be there.

Mine never was.

It’s strange how something so ordinary can quietly become part of the way you see yourself.

I don’t remember all the names that made those lists.

I don’t even remember what most of those boys look like today.

But I remember what I started believing.

I’m just not one of the beautiful girls.

Children don’t know the difference between an opinion and a fact.

So I carried that opinion with me as if it were the truth.

If something in this story felt familiar, you’re welcome to stay. Every week, I write for women figuring out who they’re becoming next.

Without realizing it, I started collecting evidence.

I compared myself to other women.

To friends who became models.

To women who always seemed effortlessly beautiful.

To the girls who entered a room and somehow everyone noticed.

I admired them.

Sometimes, if I’m honest, I envied them.

And somewhere inside me, that twelve-year-old girl kept whispering,

“See? They’re the beautiful ones.”

Years passed.

Life happened.

I became a woman.

A wife.

A mother.

I stopped thinking about those classroom lists.

Or at least I thought I had.

Then, earlier this year, a friend called me.

She owns a skincare brand.

She asked if I would model for the launch of a new product.

I actually laughed.

Surely she had the wrong person.

There were so many women more photogenic.

More glamorous.

More… model-like.

But I showed up.

We spent a few hours taking photographs.

It felt simple.

Beautiful.

And then I went back to my life.

Months later, walking through Milan, I looked up.

And there she was.

Me.

My face was covering pharmacy windows.

Printed on product boxes.

Looking back at me from places I had walked past hundreds of times before.

I stood there for a while.

Not because I suddenly thought I had become beautiful.

But because, for a brief moment, I remembered that little girl sitting in a classroom in Brazil.

The one who believed she wasn’t enough to be chosen.

The one who quietly accepted someone else’s definition of beauty as her own.

And I wanted to hug her.

Because the thing that moved me wasn’t seeing my face in a pharmacy window.

It was realizing how long I’d allowed a twelve-year-old story to shape the way I saw myself.

The campaign didn’t make me beautiful.

It simply made me question the story.

And maybe that’s what healing really is.

Not becoming someone different.

Not waiting for the world to finally approve of us.

But finding enough distance to ask:

“Who told me this about myself?”

“And why did I believe them for so long?”

I wish I could tell you that from that day on, I never questioned my beauty again.

That wouldn’t be true.

Some stories don’t disappear overnight.

They soften.

They lose their certainty.

They stop sounding like facts and start sounding like old echoes.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe healing isn’t the moment we stop doubting ourselves.

Maybe it’s the moment we stop treating those doubts as the final word.

What I needed was to stop asking twelve-year-old memories to introduce me to the woman I’ve become.

If I could go back to that classroom today, I wouldn’t tell that little girl,

“One day your face will be displayed in shop windows across Milan.”

Because that isn’t the point.

I’d kneel beside her and tell her something I wish someone had told me sooner.

“Sweet girl… the people who made that list never imagined you’d carry their words for so many years.

It’s time to put them down.

They were never yours to carry.”

They don’t get to decide how you’ll spend the next thirty years looking at yourself.

And maybe…

Neither do the adults who came after them.

What story about yourself have you been carrying for years… simply because someone else wrote it first?

Just Julia

Prefer to listen? Just Julia is also a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Instead, it changed my life.

At the beginning of this year, I started asking myself questions I had avoided for years.

Not because I was unhappy.

But because, for the first time, I was curious enough to wonder if the life I had built was also the life that was truly aligned with who I was becoming.

So I started reading.

Journaling.

Learning more about meditation, spirituality, energy, neuro plasticity.

I expected clarity.

What I got was uncertainty.

The more honest my questions became, the more parts of my life seemed to shift.

At first, it felt like loss.

Like pieces of my identity were quietly disappearing before I had found anything to replace them.

I kept wondering,

“Why is everything becoming so uncertain just when I thought I was getting closer to myself?”

But lately, another thought has been finding me.

Maybe life wasn’t taking things away.

Maybe it was creating space.

Space for questions I would never have dared to ask six months ago.

Space for ideas I wouldn’t even have considered.

Space for a version of myself that couldn’t grow inside the life I had become so comfortable living.

I’m still in the middle of that process.

I don’t know exactly where it will lead.

Maybe that’s the point.

For the first time in a long time, I’m no longer trying to rush to the answer.

I’m learning to trust the questions.

So this is what this publication will be.

Not a place where someone who has everything figured out shares advice.

A place where someone who’s learning to ask better questions shares the journey.

If you’re somewhere between the life you’ve known and the one you’re slowly discovering…

Welcome.

Maybe we’ll find a few answers together.

Just Julia

If something in this story felt familiar, you’re welcome to stay. Every week, I write for women figuring out who they’re becoming next.

Prefer to listen? Just Julia is also a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.