I Thought I Missed My Moment

I Thought I Missed My Moment — I Was Growing Into It

At 17, I was accepted to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

I had applied quietly, almost protectively, as if naming the dream too loudly might make it disappear. When the acceptance letter came, I held it like proof — not just that I could draw, but that the creative part of me had a future.

When I asked my parents for help with tuition, they said no.

Art, I was told, was not practical. It was uncertain. It was not the stable path they believed was right for me.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. I love my faith and my community. But at that time, creative ambition for a young woman was not encouraged in the way it is today. Stability mattered. Marriage mattered. Building a home mattered.

So I folded the acceptance letter away.

And slowly, I folded the dream away with it.

For years, I believed I had missed my moment. What I did not understand then is something many people only realize much later: postponing a dream does not erase it. It simply waits.

Over time, something more than an opportunity faded. My confidence did too.

When your deepest hopes are redirected at a young age, you begin to question your own voice. I stopped drawing seriously. I told myself it had been childish. I built a life that was full and meaningful — marriage, motherhood, responsibility, love — but the quiet question never left me: What if?

For years, that question felt heavy.

A few years ago, I began drawing again. Not with a plan. Not with ambition. Just small sketches, playful characters, short videos. Strangers began commenting that I was talented, that I inspired them.

I remember reading those words and thinking: Who are they talking about?

When belief is set aside young, confidence feels unfamiliar even decades later.

One night, lying in bed, I asked myself a simple question: Why don’t I write a children’s book about this?

At first, it was personal. I wanted my own children to hear a message I had not fully believed at 17 — that dreams can pause without disappearing.

What I didn’t expect was how much joy I would find in returning to something I once thought I had lost.

I have since written and illustrated children’s books centered on confidence, dreams and family. But the deeper realization came not from publishing. It came from understanding timing.

At 17, I knew how to draw.

But I did not yet have voice.

I did not yet have lived experience.

I did not yet understand what I wanted to say.

Life — raising children, navigating doubt, facing hardship, losing and rebuilding confidence — shaped me in ways no classroom could. The years I once saw as lost were quietly forming something deeper.

We often assume that ambition has a window — that if it does not unfold early, it has somehow slipped away. There is a quiet pressure to achieve quickly, to establish ourselves while we are still young enough to feel full of possibility. When life moves differently — through family, responsibility, doubt or simply time — it can feel like we have fallen behind.

But perhaps growth is not something we can measure on a straight line. Perhaps what feels like delay is simply preparation. The years that seem to pull us away from a dream may, in quieter ways, be shaping what we will eventually bring to it.

As a teenager, I imagined becoming a big artist, living in Manhattan and being recognized. That dream was about achievement.

Today, my dream is different. I want what I have lived to reach someone else — a child who doubts herself, a woman who believes she missed her chance, a parent trying to balance expectation and identity.

For a long time, I believed I had missed my moment.

Now I understand something gentler and more powerful: I was growing into it.

Some dreams do not happen when we first imagine them.

They happen when we are finally ready to carry them.