I Was About to Turn Fifty
I was about to turn fifty, and I decided I wanted to gift myself something special. Something grand.
Louboutins came to mind immediately. Red soles. Something I could point to and say, I earned this.
But when I actually sat with it, got quiet, stopped answering on autopilot, my intuition said something else entirely.
What if you gifted yourself permission to love yourself.
That was it. Not a shoe. Not a trip. Not a thing I could unwrap. Just the one answer my gut gave me the moment I finally let it speak instead of my head.
By fifty, I had already done the obvious work. Changed my nutrition. Cut back on alcohol. Fixed the way I communicated with the people I loved.
One piece was still untouched.
The way I talked to myself. Even deeper, what I believed about myself.
If someone had transcribed the actual words running through my head on an average day, I would have been committed. That mean. That ugly. Decades of it, so constant I had stopped recognizing it as cruelty at all. It was just background noise. Just how I thought.
I made one decision, in one moment, sitting there with my own question still hanging in the air, trusting the intuition that had already answered it.
I was going to love me.
It did not happen the way I expected.
I made one decision, in one moment, sitting there with my own question still hanging in the air, trusting the intuition that had already answered it.
I did not sit down to install new, nicer thoughts. I sat down to remove the veils that had been covering the Inner Empire Alchemist™ the entire time.
You are ugly was never true. It was a veil, a story, a belief. Underneath it was her, the same woman who was always whole, always worthy, exactly as she was before anyone ever told her otherwise.
You are stupid was a veil too. It was never who I was. It was just a story I had been living from for so long I mistook it for fact.
You will not succeed, another veil. Not a prediction. Not a truth. Just an old belief I had let sit on top of who she actually was.
Removing them did not create a better version of me. It only stopped me from living from the story instead of from her. I was unveiled.
Not becoming someone new. Unveiling the Inner Empire Alchemist™ who had been there the entire time.
It worked.
My default words in my own head are kind now. Supportive. Encouraging. What I say to myself determines the system I live in, and I finally changed the system.
I got the shoes eventually too. I did not need them to feel worthy. But wearing them felt like honoring the Divine Spirit in a Sacred Vessel, and that fit her too.
But they were never actually the gift.
My world changed. She was leading instead of the story. My energy steadied. My decisions got clearer, in my business and everywhere else. I stopped shrinking in rooms I used to talk myself out of walking into. I started trusting myself again, quickly, without the years of second-guessing that used to eat up half my day.
That is what unveiling actually gets you. Not a nicer inner voice. A different one. Your own intuition, finally given a seat at the table instead of talked over by every old story that told you otherwise.
I started trusting myself again, quickly, without the years of second-guessing that used to eat up half my day.
A seat at the table changes more than how I feel inside. It changes how I lead outside. When intuition sits at the table instead of being talked over, business decisions look different too. I stop negotiating with myself over a yes I already know. I stop staying in a launch, a partnership, or a room that only makes sense on paper. I know which door is mine to walk through and which one was never meant for me. The outer empire I have built is only as strong as the Inner Empire Alchemist™ that sustains it, and she does not make decisions from fear anymore.
Now this is the work I do with every woman who sits across from me. Not handing her a list of affirmations and hoping they stick. Finding the actual veil, the old story she has been carrying so long she thinks it is just who she is, and helping her see it clearly enough to finally take it off.
Watch out, world. She is showing up as her.
Meet the expert:
Debbie Roppo, The Inner Empire Alchemist™, is a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach who helps women in a significant life season reconnect to their Spiritual Guidance System, the inner intelligence beneath the job title. In 2013 she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and told she would likely be in a wheelchair within five years, she chose a different path and built a framework that treats symptoms as signals rather than failures. She believes every woman is divine spirit, housed in a sacred vessel, wearing a business suit, and her work is helping women live like they know it.
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