Then I realized he had already acknowledged that; the letter’s greater importance was reminding me how far I had come.

I read it aloud alone in the studio after everyone went home.

At the end, I wrote a reply to the woman I had been five years earlier.

I told her she would build her own firm, that she would learn to ask for help without shame, and that she would become a mother three times over in one extraordinary morning.

I told her the fear would not disappear all at once, but it would stop making decisions for her.