Believe It, Become It

When I was seven, I told my grandmother I wanted to fly.

She chuckled, brushing a hand over my curls, and said, “If you believe it, you can become it.”

Back then, I thought she meant wings. I didn’t understand that she was talking about something far greater—something invisible, yet powerful enough to shape a life.

I carried that sentence with me like a stone in my pocket. It was small but solid. I didn’t always notice it, but it was there.

Chapter 1: The Girl Who Didn’t Quite Fit

Growing up in a quiet town in Ohio, I never really felt like I belonged. While other kids dreamed of becoming doctors or athletes, I dreamed of telling stories—of standing on stage, of sharing something from deep inside my heart that could make someone laugh or cry or think for the first time in a long time.

But I was quiet. Shy. The kind of kid who whispered when others shouted.

One day in middle school, my teacher announced a talent show. My hands started shaking before she even finished her sentence. I had a secret dream: I wanted to perform a spoken word poem. I'd been writing for months, filling notebooks with thoughts I was too afraid to say aloud.

I signed up. And then I panicked.

The night before the show, I tried to back out. “No one wants to hear me talk about my feelings,” I told my mom. “I’m not special. I’m just... me.”

She knelt down, looked me in the eye, and said the same thing Grandma once had: "If you believe it, you can become it."

So I went. I stood on that stage with sweaty palms and a racing heart. My voice shook, but I spoke. I told a story about being invisible, about feeling like your words don’t matter, and about wanting to matter anyway.

When I finished, there was silence. Then, applause.

But what mattered more than the claps were the eyes—teary eyes of someone in the second row, a boy I’d never spoken to who whispered “thank you” on my way off stage.

That was the first time I believed it. And something in me began to shift.

Chapter 2: The Fire and the Fog

Belief isn’t a straight path. It comes in waves. It’s strong and then it disappears. For every moment I believed, there were five where I didn’t.

In high school, I applied to a summer program for young writers. I didn’t think I had a chance. When I got accepted, I cried.

But at the program, surrounded by teens who had already published poems and performed on real stages, I shrank again. I stopped writing for a while after that. I told myself it was because I was busy, but really, I was afraid.

What if I wasn’t good enough?

What if I believed in something that would never come true?

What if I was wrong?

Years went by. I majored in communications, got a desk job, and told myself I’d write again “when things calmed down.”

They never did.

Chapter 3: The Wake-Up Call

It wasn’t until my grandmother passed away that something inside me woke up.

I found an old letter from her in my closet one rainy night. I hadn’t opened it before. It was in her gentle handwriting, dated years earlier. In it, she wrote:

"You have a light in you. It won’t go away, but if you ignore it, it will grow dim. Let it shine, sweetheart. Even if it’s scary. Even if you don’t think anyone will notice. The right people always do."

I cried like I hadn’t cried in years.

And then, I picked up a pen.

I started writing again—every day, in the early mornings before work, in between grocery store trips, in the quiet of the night when the world was asleep and I felt most alive.

I submitted a story to a small online magazine. They published it.

Then another.

Then a spoken word piece.

Then I got an invitation to perform again, ten years after that first middle school stage.

This time, I wasn’t the girl who whispered. I was the woman who remembered who she was.

Chapter 4: Becoming It

Now, I speak to classrooms. I mentor teens who feel too small to dream big. I run workshops about finding your voice, even when it shakes.

And every time someone asks how I got here, I smile and say: “I believed it. And so, I became it.”

It wasn’t magic.

It wasn’t easy.

It wasn’t a straight line.

It was messy and full of doubt and late nights and small wins and big fears. But belief isn’t about being certain. It’s about being willing to try again, even when you're not.

It’s about holding onto that little stone in your pocket, even when you can’t see the path ahead.

The Moral

Believe it. Become it.

You don’t have to be the loudest. You don’t have to be the best. You just have to believe that what lives inside you is worth honoring—and then, slowly, bravely, become it.

Because belief is the first step, and becoming is the journey that follows.