I’ve spent so much of my life favoring one part of myself over another—usually the more likable, more acceptable version.

I’ve worn many hats, tried on so many identities, shifted my tone, my style, even my desires. And somehow, I always moved forward with the version other people seemed to like best.

I’ve been Anna the entrepreneur. Anna the lonely girl. Anna the runner. Anna the writer. All of those have been true, in their own way. But the problem with trying to be just one thing is that you end up quietly rejecting all the other parts of you. It becomes a black-and-white way of living — or, in a sense, a way of performing. At least it did for me. I’d go all in on one identity, and in doing so, would feel a conflict inside.

I’d say: Well, today I’m this. Because this is what’s working. This is what people respond to. This is what makes me money.

And there’s a reason we do this, isn’t there? It’s not just performance or vanity.

Being one thing — having one clear answer — spares you the discomfort of uncertainty. You don’t have to sit in the ache of ‘not knowing.’ You don’t have to wrestle with contradictions or hold two truths in your hands without trying to collapse them into one.

All of Me is my attempt to reconcile that tension. To explore the part of me, maybe the part in all of us, that struggles to choose. That feels torn between different versions of self. That wants to be whole, but doesn’t always know how.

For so long, I’ve written to figure things out. To land somewhere. To name what happened and what it meant. But now, I don’t always want to define the answer. I don’t want to wrap everything up in a bow and say, this is what it taught me, or this is who I am now.

Right now, I want to live in the gray. To stretch my tolerance for what’s unresolved. To retire from the performance of a finished self.

I can’t tell you exactly where this is going—and in the past, I would’ve rushed to define it. For you. For me. But in the spirit of nuance and not-knowing, what I can offer is:

My honesty.
My wrestlings.
My questions that don’t always have answers.

I hope All of Me feels like a warm hug for the parts of you that don’t quite have a name yet. A soft place to land. A gentle challenge to accept your complexity without trying to clean it up.

More than anything, I hope it reminds you:

You don’t have to be one thing.
You’re allowed to change.
You’re allowed to not know yet.

And I hope you’ll stay awhile.