10/08/2026
Growing up, Navratri was mostly just fun to me. 💃 The music, the dancing, and the outfits I had to wear even though I had zero patience while my mom pinned and fixed the same outfit I had begged her to help me put on five minutes earlier. 😂
As I got older though, I started understanding what we were actually celebrating, and that part became much more interesting to me. 🙋🏽♀️ Navratri is a Hindu festival centered around Shakti, or feminine power, and celebrates different forms of the Goddess representing strength, courage, wisdom, protection, abundance and creation. And once I really understood that, a lot of things started colliding in my brain!
I was raised to learn, get educated, work hard, keep growing and make something of myself. What I wasn’t prepared for were the random roadblocks that started showing up as I got older, especially the ones that made me stop and think, hold up… why is this even a roadblock in the first place?
That is probably where a lot of my “question the ceiling before you accept it” mentality came from. Not because someone sat me down and taught me to challenge every limitation, but because life kept handing me moments that made me wonder who decided those limitations belonged there at all.
And that contradiction has only become more interesting to me with age. We can celebrate feminine power in theory while still living in a society where women are often rewarded for being agreeable, accommodating and easy to digest. You can be ambitious, just not too ambitious. Confident, but not intimidating. Independent, but somehow still expected to make everyone around you comfortable with it.
And yes, somehow in 2026, a lot of that is still very real. I don’t look at Navratri the same way I did as a little girl..Turns out there was a little more happening underneath all those cute outfits than I realized at the time. ❤️
