I was young when I first noticed the shift.

It wasn’t loud or obvious—just a quiet awareness that settled in like fog.

Another girl walked into the room and everything about her seemed effortless. The way she smiled, the way others responded to her. And suddenly, without warning, I felt like I had to make myself smaller.

She hadn’t done anything wrong. But I had already learned to look sideways—to measure, to compare, to wonder if there was still enough room left for me to shine.

No one told me to feel that way. Not directly. But the messages were everywhere.

Little girls praised for being “the prettiest.” Teenagers pitted against one another in subtle competitions—who wore it better, who had more friends, who got the most attention. Women constantly shown that there’s only one crown, and if someone else is wearing it, we must’ve missed our chance.

I didn’t realize how deeply it had shaped me until much later, when I caught myself sitting across from a woman I loved—a friend, a sister—and feeling threatened by her success. Her light made me question my own.

And that’s when it hit me: I had spent so much of my life trying to hold onto a crown I was never supposed to wear alone.

It’s exhausting, isn’t it? This invisible competition. This quiet belief that if she shines, I have to dim. That if she’s winning, I must be losing. That only one of us gets to feel beautiful, or accomplished, or enough.

But something in me began to shift when I saw what it looked like for women to reach for each other instead of racing past one another.

I watched a woman gently straighten another woman’s crown—no spotlight, no stage—just a quiet moment of affirmation. No one else noticed, but I did. It was tender. And strong. And it felt like truth.

I’ve seen women offer their hands instead of their judgments. I’ve heard voices lifted in celebration instead of critique. I’ve felt the healing that happens when someone looks you in the eye and says, I’m not here to compete. I’m here to remind you who you are.

That’s the kind of woman I want to be.

I want to help another woman hold her head high—not because I’m above her, but because I’ve been her. I’ve been the girl wondering if I belonged. I’ve been the woman who felt small in someone else’s presence. And I’ve also been the one who needed her crown gently straightened, by someone who didn’t flinch at my frailty.

We don’t talk about that enough—how fragile even the strongest of us can feel. How we all have moments when the weight of what we’re carrying makes our crown slip just a little.

And maybe that’s the most sacred work of all. To notice. To reach. To say, I see you. You don’t have to carry this alone.

I’m learning that when we stop seeing each other as competition and start showing up as community, something holy happens: We soften. We make space. We begin to believe, again, that there’s room enough for all of us. And slowly, one story at a time, the script changes.

We don’t have to fight for the crown.

We were born wearing it.

And the real beauty comes when we help one another wear it well—because her crown is not a threat to yours. There is room for both to shine. And when we choose to lift each other, we all rise a little higher.