Honestly, I've been trying to keep it cool since yesterday, but if I'm being completely real... 13 year-old me is screaming inside!

And while I've been far removed from fandom culture for quite sometime since leaving *most* social media behind, this is literally the engagement heard 'round the world - the engagement of a lifetime. 

Taylor Swift is engaged, and while the headlines are about the love story itself, what's struck me the most is what it says to women everywhere: that life isn't linear, love isn't about being rescued, and that you don't have to shrink yourself or have it all figured out by the end of your twenties. 

Taylor's story reminds us that you can be whole, radiant, and fully yourself - and the right person will still choose you. 

When you're in your twenties, it can feel like everyone around you (family, friends, society at large) expects you to have it all neatly tied up: the husband, the kids, the house, the career. And if you don't? You're "behind".
Or something must be "wrong" with you. 

But Taylor's engagement tells a different story. She's 35, wildly successful, and yes - she's also endured heartbreak after heartbreak in the most public way possible. And still - love found her. Not because she needed saving, but because she was already whole. 

She didn't wait around for someone to complete her. She built her life. She created art. She poured into her friendships. She found joy in her work, in her cats, in her world tours, in her own voice. She wasn't waiting to become someone - she already was someone. 

And then, in the middle of all that fullness, love walked in and offered a friendship bracelet (hehe).

Her story tells us, as women, that it's okay if things don't happen on "the timeline". 

It's okay if you're single at 28.
It's okay if you don't have kids at 32. 
It's okay if your story looks different than the ones you grew up around.

Because real love - the kind that chooses you not because you're incomplete, but because you're already whole - doesn't care about deadlines. 

She didn't need him to be whole. And he didn't need her to be whole either. 

That's what makes their story so compelling. Taylor has her own empire - her art, her career, her family, her voice. Travis has his own victories, his own legacy, his own family cheering him on. Neither was incomplete before they found each other. 

As she mentioned on the New Heights podcast, Travis is her human exclamation point - the one who magnifies and enhances her life. 

This is a love story built on equal footing. Two people already rooted in themselves, choosing to walk together. Not out of desperation, but out of abundance. 

And that's the lesson for us:

We don't have to become less to be loved.
We don't have to shrink or stay small.
We don't have to dim our light to make space for someone else's. 

The right partner won't be threatened by our strength - they'll celebrate it. They'll want us to be more of ourselves, not less. 

For so long, women have been conditioned to believe there's a deadline on our worth or that the prince has to rescue the princess for the sake of true love. But Taylor's story pushes back on that narrative in the most powerful way. 

At 35, she is proof that life doesn't follow a straight line - and that's more than okay. The right love doesn't show up because you've checked off all the boxes at the right time. It shows up when it's meant to, when you've grown into the person who can welcome it with open hands. 

And here's the beautiful truth: even if she had never found this love story, Taylor would still be whole. Still successful. Still radiant. Still enough.

So, here's to women everywhere: may we keep living, keep thriving, keep becoming; for the hope of it all - until our human exclamation point comes along. 

And even if it never does, may we learn to become our own.