Apparently I’m Intimidating

The Quiet Freedom of the Third Chapter

Over the weekend, a 29-year-old woman told me something that stopped me mid-conversation.

“You’re a little intimidating.”

I laughed at first because I genuinely didn’t know what she meant. I thought I had simply been… myself ? But she continued explaining. She said I seemed clear about what I wanted (okay), that I was direct (I like direct, specific communication), and that I didn’t apologize for it (didn’t think I had done anything that needed an apology?).

Then she added something that made me laugh out loud.

She said I reminded her a little of … Miranda Priestly.

I admit, I was a tiny bit aghast.

She had zero idea that for most of my adult career, I was an Executive Assistant at a high level.

Miranda Priestly …from The Devil Wears Prada?

Yikes.

I asked her if that was who she was referring to.

She nodded.

So naturally I quoted the line:

“Details of your incompetence do not interest me.”

She looked completely startled.

I slowly smiled and said, “It’s a quote from the movie.”

Apparently, she hadn’t memorized the film the way some of us have.

But her comment stuck with me the rest of the day. Because what she meant by “Miranda Priestly” wasn’t arrogance or cruelty.

The more I pressed, she meant that I seemed comfortable with myself.

Clear.

Direct.

Not overly concerned with how it all landed.

Okay.

Then she said something else that caught me off guard.

She mentioned my gray hair.

She said it didn’t look like someone who had “given up.”

In fact, she said the opposite. I clearly take care of myself, my skin, how I dress, and how I carry myself.

But the gray hair communicated something different. It communicated that I wasn’t asking the world for permission.

The conversation stayed with me.

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Yesterday was International Women’s Day. That timing has me reflecting even more on the strange and beautiful freedom that seems to arrive in what I’ve started calling the third chapter of life.

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I’ve been reading David Benner’s book The Gift of Being Yourself, and it may be one of my favorite books in a long time.

It’s thoughtful but simple, the kind of book where you underline something every few pages.

The foreword states, “This is a very challenging book. If we do listen to it fully and seek to implement it in our lives, it will lead to a transformation. That will mean the death of our carefully cultivated false self.” Ouch.

The identity I’ve spent years constructing so that I will be accepted, admired, liked, safe, or successful? Another ouch.

Like most of us, I began building that version of myself very early. I learned how to read the room, how to perform, how to keep people happy, and how to become the version of myself that received approval. And for a long time, that system worked… or at least I thought it did. It certainly worked for those around me.

But somewhere along the way…often in what has been coined as “midlife” - that version of myself exhausted me… it led to a shadow side that wasn’t dark or ominous in the way it can be for some.… frankly, for me?

It was just the disjointed parts, the lack of being true to who I was meant to be, rather it was so much performing what everyone around me expected me to be, my work, my family, my “friends”, my Christianity, all of it.

Benner writes, “The false self is who we think we are. The true self is who we are before God.”

The sentence stopped me the first time I read it. My years had truly been spent managing impressions…trying to be the right version of myself in the right room, trying to be liked, trying not to be “too much”, trying not to disappoint anyone.

But something has shifted as the years have passed. Maybe it’s wisdom. Maybe it’s simply the quiet work of God peeling away the layers I’ve built to protect myself. Or maybe it’s the realization that I no longer have the energy to keep performing for rooms I no longer belong in.

Benner writes, “The journey toward our true self is the journey of allowing the false self to die.”

When I was younger, the idea of that kind of death sounded terrifying. Now it feels more like relief.

Because something changes in this season of life. I still care about how I show up in the world, but here is the thing…I care far less about managing everyone else’s opinion about it.

I find myself trusting the still small voice more… I say what I mean. I’ve stopped negotiating with every expectation around me.

Apparently, that can look intimidating? Ha.

But the more I reflected on what that young woman said, the more I realized intimidation probably wasn’t the right word. What she was sensing was clarity. And clarity can feel confronting if you’re still in the season of trying to figure out who you’re supposed to be.

I remember that season well, when you’re still measuring yourself against everyone else, still wondering if you’re too much or not enough, still trying to get it right.

But the older I get, the more I realize something surprising: freedom often looks like confidence from the outside, but from the inside it feels much more like surrender.

Surrendering the pressure to impress.

Surrendering the need to explain yourself.

Surrendering the exhausting work of maintaining a version of myself that was never fully true.

Benner writes, “Knowing God and knowing ourselves are deeply intertwined.”

Which means the spiritual journey is not just about believing the right things; it’s about becoming the person God actually created me to be, not the polished version or the curated version, but the real one.

And maybe that’s one of the hidden gifts of getting older.

The slow, sometimes messy death of the false self I spent years constructing, and the quiet emergence of the woman who is finally comfortable in her own skin.

Gray hair and all.

@dawn_marraccino

Dawn Marraccino on Instagram: "It’s been three years since I de…

So I say to you… If you’ve made it this far - If you’re somewhere in this third chapter too, here are a few questions I’ve been sitting with lately:

And my Lord, my Lord… if you are younger - I challenge you to get it right now… don’t continue to curate to the expectations of anyone outside of Jesus … and well, I’ve found that at the core of it His expectations, while they seem outrageous, actually are not: Love Him, Love Others.

So the questions I ask myself, and perhaps you might consider:

Where in your life might you still be performing instead of simply showing up as yourself?

What rooms do you no longer belong in?

What expectations have you been carrying that God may be inviting you to release?

Where might the false self still be quietly running the show?

And what would it look like to live with a little more clarity and a little less apology?

Because the gift of this season isn’t perfection.

It’s freedom.

And sometimes that freedom looks a lot like a woman who finally knows who she is… even if that feels a little intimidating,

Dawn