More Than Just
Why the smallest word can be the sharpest cage
“I’ve lived a thousand lives.”
I said this to a friend recently, and it hasn’t left me. It keeps echoing—an incantation, a reminder, a truth too big for a single sentence.
Books did this to me, for me.
They taught me right from wrong.
They carried me across galaxies.
They permitted me to love wildly, to rage righteously, to grieve, to plot revenge, to fall, and to rise again.
Through books, I’ve saved the world.
I’ve danced under stars.
I’ve made love and I’ve made murderers pay.
I’ve lost my way and found it again.
Page after page, I became the whole library.
If we can be everything between the pages of a book, what might it mean to give ourselves that same permission here, in this world, too?
And out here, in what we call the “real” world, our vastness sometimes forgets its own name.
We say:
I’m just a woman.
I’m just a wife.
I’m just an accountant.
I’m just a business coach.
That little word slides in like a thief. Just steals the expanse of who we are. It reduces a symphony to a single note, a library to a single poorly written pamphlet.
Every time we let “just” linger in our mouths, we unconsciously choose smallness over the vastness that is already ours.
Beloved, you are not “just” anything. You are everything. A constellation. A revolution. A library brimming with stories too wild, too gorgeous, too necessary to be contained by one identity.
👉 Reflection Prompt:
Where has “just” been living in your language, and what opens up if you excise it?
Try rewriting one sentence of your life:
“I’m just a freelancer” becomes “I’m a creative architect shaping freedom through my art.”
“I’m just a mom” becomes “I’m a legacy-builder raising visionaries.”
Let your sentences stretch until they sound like truth again.
🔥 Daily Affirmation:
I am a universe of possibility.
I speak with the fullness of my power.
I honor every chapter of who I am.
I am the whole library, and I keep adding shelves and priceless first editions.
PS: Profit is Protest—and so is language that refuses to shrink. Every word we choose can be an act of rebellion or reclamation. When we remove “just,” we remind the world—and ourselves—that worth was never up for debate. We stop auditioning for belonging. We start writing our own legend. We begin to speak in paragraphs of power, printing our names in gold ink across the spine of our own becoming.
Another great post about the power of language and stories we tell ourselves and the world. We have to remove those pesky descriptions and replace them with power words. Thanks Shaneh