It's Okay to Fail

(A Love Letter to the Woman Who’s Rerouting)
By Ellen Adams

We don’t talk about failure in polite circles.
It’s whispered behind closed doors.
Filed under shame. Labeled as weakness.
A chapter we hope no one reads.

But here’s what I’ve learned — as a woman who has burned things down and rebuilt more than once:

Failure isn’t the end. It’s an invitation.

💫 What if failure isn’t failure at all?

What if it’s feedback?
What if it’s your soul whispering,
“This isn’t for me anymore.”

We’ve been conditioned to see missteps as character flaws.
To hide the pivots. To explain the reinventions.
To pretend we’re still aligned with who we once were.

But the truth?

You’ve outgrown who you were.
That’s not a crisis — that’s evolution.

Every time I’ve “failed” —

• In business

• In love

• In my relationship with myself
  — it didn’t break me.

It broke me open.

It rerouted me toward alignment.
Toward healing.
Toward the woman I was always becoming.

🔥 This is what failure really is:

• A wound that taught you how to clean and protect your energy

• A broken plan that revealed a better way

• A pause that made you finally listen

You don’t need to fix what failed.
You need to listen to what it taught you.

🕊 Crossing the Chasm

To me, this is where coaching begins.

When you’re at the edge of something —
A cliff, a calling, a reckoning —
And you don’t know how to get to the other side.

A coach doesn’t shove you.
She sees you.

She helps you build the bridge.
Or gives you a hand after you leap.
She doesn’t hand you a map — she walks beside you as you create your own.

And most of all:
She reminds you that nothing is wrong with you.
You’re not broken.
You’re becoming.

🌿 Let This Be Your Permission Slip

You don’t have to apologize for the pivots.
You don’t have to hide the starts and stops.

Let this post be your green light:
It’s OK to “fail.”
Because you’re not starting over —
You’re starting aligned.