Over the past few months, I’ve been feeling disconnected and unsettled.

Nothing appears to be wrong — at least not on the surface. Work is stressful at times, but manageable. After the beautiful disruption of two wonder-filled weeks exploring Japan, I’ve finally eased back into a steady rhythm of adequate rest and regular exercise. I’ve reconnected with friends, been more honest about my feelings, and even started setting boundaries — something I’ve always struggled with. By all accounts, I’m coping well with the chaos of everyday life.

And yet, I feel uneasy. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the frequency and intensity of my nightmares have returned — a tell-tale sign that my inner world is stirring.

Perhaps the turmoil is a symptom of spending too much time contemplating the architecture of my existence and not enough time simply inhabiting it.

Lately, my mind has been steeped in a low, persistent hum — a kind of cognitive static, dense with questions that have no clear answers. The one that keeps resurfacing is this: What does it really mean to be a modern woman in a world that perpetuates the illusion we can have it all?

This question has taken up an enormous amount of real estate in my mind, especially as I find myself reflecting more on the idea of motherhood. We, as women, have been sold an impossible ideal: that we can simultaneously build thriving careers, nurture meaningful relationships, raise intelligent, emotionally resilient, socially adept, and creatively nourished children, prioritise our health, explore the world, and still carve out space for our own passions.

But in reality, this vision is a beautifully packaged myth that often leaves us feeling stretched and quietly inadequate. As Shonda Rhimes, the award-winning creator of Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder — and a single mother of three — once said:

“Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.”

It’s a sobering truth — one that invites a deeper, more honest reckoning with what we choose to prioritise and what we quietly sacrifice in the process. Something will have to give.

A Miraculous Improbability

Amid these competing forces, I’ve been consumed by an existential qualm: the miraculous improbability of my existence. Dr. Ali Binazir, a physician and philosopher, estimated that the probability of any one of us existing is about 1 in 10²⁶⁸⁵⁰⁰⁰ — that’s a 10 followed by over 2.6 million zeroes. A number so staggeringly large it borders on the incomprehensible.

Setting aside my belief in divine intervention for a moment, the mathematical reality that my existence defies all odds conjures a strange kind of pressure — a weighty awareness that I have been given something rare, precious, and unrepeatable. So if my being here is nothing short of miraculous, is it not a quiet betrayal to spend my days chasing fleeting dopamine hits, numbed by distraction or dulled by habits that hasten my decay? Is it not a crime against my own humanity to bury my gifts (whatever they might be) beneath fear, self-doubt, or procrastination — to tiptoe through this life and fail to honour the potential pulsing within me?

And yet — how do I reconcile the miraculous rarity of my existence with the undeniable truth that I am bound by the limits of time and mortality?

This is the grief I carry — the aching awareness of unspent potential, the sorrow that I will always fall short in some way, never able to give all that I have to give, whether to the world, to my passions, or to those I cherish most.