Chapter Sixty-One: The Year of Yes

This is Mira’s story — part fiction, part reflection, wholly honest.
(Each chapter will end with a note from her writing, signed as your trusted friend.)

🎧 Listen while you read: “Start Again” by Nick Mulvey
For the brave beauty of saying yes before you’re ready—and becoming someone new in the process

Mira’s Story: The Year of Yes
Where the yes begins before the world echoes it back

It started, as most things did in her life, with Mira’s words.

Rowan had asked her to come on the podcast as her, “just one episode,” he’d said, casual, like he didn’t already know it would change everything. They sat in the sound booth he and Theo had built in the back of the old garage, microphones close, tea cooling between them.

It felt both larger and smaller than when Mira had sat in here with Paige and spoke about starting again.

He asked questions. She told the truth.

And when the episode aired titled, The Closet, the Card, and the Chaos We Choose, something shifted.

People found her.
Read her.
Saw her.

One message turned into dozens. Dozens into hundreds. Blog shares. Substack subscriptions. Podcast inquiries. Speaking invites. And then a producer who called Rowan first and said, “She’s the kind of voice people don’t know they’ve been waiting for.”

Rowan found her in the kitchen, standing barefoot and stunned, her phone still in her hand.

He took one look at her and smiled.

“Looks like it’s happening,” he said.

She blinked. “I didn’t think it would feel like this… I thought I’d feel ready.”

He poured her tea and slid it across the counter. “You don’t have to be ready. Just willing.”

She stared at him. “I’d have to take a sabbatical.”

“I know.”

“Financially…”

“We’ll figure it out. We already are.”

“Rowan.”

He stepped around the counter, cupped her face in both hands, and kissed her like he was sealing the next phase of her life into place.

“You’ve spent your whole life holding everyone else together. Let this year be for you. Say yes to you.”

She did.

Not all at once.

Not without panic.

But slowly, week by week, Mira stepped into the version of herself that had always been just one breath away.

She said yes to the sabbatical.

Yes to launching her own podcast The Clever Confidante. 
Yes to writing full-time.
Yes to a second print run of her chapbook.
Yes to a speaking panel on mythic femininity and creative reclamation.
Yes to pitching a proposal that scared her.

She said yes to mornings with lemon water and words that flowed without apology.
Yes to late nights with Rowan and the moonlight.
Yes to silence. To praise. To not apologizing for taking up space.

Rowan built her a recording nook in the corner of the living room.
Theo helped her polish the intro.
Even Halley, so often the voice of clarity for everyone else, had begun pausing when Mira spoke. Not to advise, but to listen.

One night, after a long editing session and too much tea, she looked at Mira across the table and said, “You know… watching you say yes has made it harder to keep saying no.” She didn’t explain what she meant. She didn’t have to.

Pepper made her a playlist called “Mom, but Make Her Famous.”

And even Paige, sharp, unflinching Paige, had started sending Mira’s episodes to colleagues, saying, “she says things I wish I had heard years ago.”

The kids had front row seats to fill, messy schedules, creative wins, quiet doubts. But what they saw most clearly was this: two people choosing each other and themselves again and again.

Pepper started journaling beside Mira each morning.
Cal helped Rowan soundproof the recording nook.
Ellie? She’d begun outlining a podcast of her own.

And Rowan?

He didn’t just build space for Mira’s voice, he made space for his own growth too. He wasn’t just holding her up. He was learning how to be held. He’d always been the steady one, the builder. But this year, he let himself be softened, witnessed, rearranged. He named what he wanted, how he felt, what scared him, what lit him up.

He didn’t disappear into her glow.
He stood beside it. And offered his own.

Rowan had always been the builder. But this time, he wasn’t building for someone, he was building with them.

And when Mira’s first keynote invitation came, he looked her dead in the eye and said, “Let’s figure this out. Together.”

And they did.

Because this time, he wasn’t repeating old patterns.

This time he wasn’t losing himself in love.

He was expanding in it.

And on the one-year anniversary of her first episode, Mira sat in front of the mic, eyes bright, voice clear and steady, and said:

“This is your reminder that it’s not too late. That your voice matters. That the life you were meant to live may still be waiting for you. Not in a big break, but in a quiet yes. The kind you whisper to yourself before anyone else believes it.”

And Mira had finally stopped waiting to be chosen.

She’d chosen herself.

And the world was starting to say yes back.

She thought, briefly, of the versions of herself that had come before, the girl who clung too tightly, the woman who stayed too long, the one who mistook being needed for being chosen.
The heartbreaks and the lessons had carried her to this place, even when she didn’t know she was moving.

There had been no single moment of arrival. Just a thousand small releases, until one day she realized her grip had loosened, and life had found its way in.

Behind her, on the shelf above the mic, sat the framed card he gave her all those months ago, She became the storm she once feared.

And next to it, just slightly off-center, was the cosmic egg still glowing, still ridiculous, still holy.

Proof that some things don’t have to make sense to be sacred.

Some things just stay.

And so did she.

Saying yes, again and again.

---

Letters from The Clever Confidante: “On Saying Yes Before You’re Ready”
When the world starts listening, but only because you spoke first

You don’t always feel ready.

Sometimes, your hands still shake. Your voice still wavers. Your inner critic is louder than your courage.

But still, you say yes.

Not because you’ve arrived. Not because the fear is gone. But because something in you knows:
it’s time.

Time to stop waiting for permission.
Time to trust the whispers that don’t need outside validation.
Time to build the thing, pitch the thing, speak the thing, live the thing before anyone claps for it.

Mira didn’t feel ready.
But she was willing.
And that changed everything.

Because readiness is a myth. But willingness? That’s magic.

This is your reminder:
The life you were meant to live might not begin with a big break.
It might begin with a quiet yes.
The kind you whisper to yourself.
The kind that says, I’m allowed to take up space.
The kind that becomes a storm.

Say it now.
Before the world echoes it back.

I’ll be here when it does.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend 💛

If Mira’s journey has whispered something true to you,
if you’ve ever felt behind, too tender, too much, or not enough,
this is your invitation to keep saying yes.

☁️ New here? You can start Mira’s Story from the beginning with Chapter Zero.

✨ Thank you for walking with me through Mira’s Story, chapter by chapter. This is where the telling ends, but not where the love does. If these words have lived with you, I hope they keep unfolding in your own story. Subscribe, stay close, and let’s keep growing in the spaces between endings and beginnings.