Not Ready, Set, Go: Jumping Into New Experiences And Finding The Strength To Be Brave

Allora Dannon is a proud romantic and self-proclaimed "Late Bloomer" who uses her platform to encourage and entertain over 35,000 TikTok users with advice and open-hearted stories about her first relationship. She is also working toward publishing her debut novel, Sisters, Salt, and Dragons, inspired by her love of fantasy, The Goonies, and Jurassic Park.

Whatever it is to overthink every life decision, examine and re-examine all potential consequences and outcomes, and then decide it’s maybe better not to attempt the thing at all—that’s me. Bravery, after all, is an exhausting prospect with unknown results.

I read a statistic once that men will often apply for a job if they meet 50% of the criteria but that women will only apply if they meet 80% or more. And it’s always made me wonder: What opportunities are we shutting ourselves out of just because we don’t feel ready?

Hi, I’m Allora. I’m 32, a self-proclaimed Late Bloomer, and I started dating my very first boyfriend in January of this year. I define “Late Bloomer” as any person of any age who feels left behind in the romance department. It’s this distinct, isolating feeling that everyone else in the world has figured this relationship/dating/love thing out, but you somehow fell behind and don’t know what you did wrong or how to fix it. There’s an infinite number of reasons why someone might identify as a late bloomer, but it boiled down to two things for me: 

No knight on a white horse was coming to find me curled up on my couch, buried in my favorite love stories. 

I hadn’t felt ready to go looking for someone…for the entirety of my adult life. 

This is how I found myself in that weird week between Christmas and New Year’s. You know, the week you have that annual existential crisis and wonder if you just wasted another year of your life and if you have anything to show for it? I’d slept in one morning, snuggled up in fleece blankets with my dog. It might have even been snowing—the window panes were frosted over—and I’d been mulling over the fact that I had built a good life for myself. I’d accomplished things I was proud of. I loved my family, my friends, and my job. I’d traveled and had hobbies that kept me on my toes. 

But I was alone. 

I realized that if I changed nothing, I would wake up 30 years from now, and my life would look exactly the same. For the first time in my 32 years of existence, I was not okay with that. 

The summer before this holiday season, I had gone on a week-long writing retreat in Scotland led by one of my favorite authors, Maggie Stiefvater. At the end of the week, Maggie told me: “I feel like you’re letting something hold you back. And once you figure out how to let it go, your possibilities will be endless.” I started bawling as soon as she said my name in a room full of the loveliest group of no-longer-strangers I’d ever met, tucked away in a castle in the Scottish Highlands, but the message stuck with me for months after I’d gone home. I couldn’t help but wonder: what kind of life was I holding myself back from? 

What couldn’t I let go of?

Fast forward to December 2022, when I was confronted with the greatest myth of our time (okay, I’m being dramatic, but it felt like a revelation): We’ll never feel ready. 

That thing you’re desirous of? Fearful of? Longing for? You’ll unlikely ever feel 100% ready to take that initial leap into achieving it. In December, when I anxiously redownloaded a dating app for the tenth time in as many years, it was the last thing I felt like doing. To hold myself accountable, I took two personal oaths: 

I am never going to feel ready, so do it scared. 

Bravery is exhausting. Don’t quit: Rest when you need it.

Coming to dating for the first time in my thirties was absolutely terrifying. I’d successfully gone unnoticed/undetected for my entire adulthood, and I’d also gotten very good at avoiding things I deemed scary. In order to keep myself from chickening out after a week or two (my m.o. for the last decade), I decided I would give myself a finite amount of time (go on 8 dates by Easter) to be brave and, if nothing was happening, I would take a break and try again later. 

It’s some kind of cosmic joke that the first person to ask me out was wonderful and is my boyfriend today.  (Please note, I didn’t just stroll into a “happily ever after.) Dating in reality—not just as an abstract concept from my favorite books—is still terrifying. I have to face, sometimes daily, every fear or insecurity I’ve ever had. But in all my worries about what could happen—all the ways this new adventure could go wrong—I’d never once entertained the notion that it might go right. That I might make a change to an already beautiful life, and I might come out the other side happy. 

I don’t know that I believe in forever, but even a season of experiencing life with someone who makes me happy was something I’d always dreamed of being brave enough for. If this year has taught me anything, it's that I’d rather try and fail than spend my whole life waiting for what I want to find me. Everything I’m afraid of could happen, but everything I’m hoping for could happen, too. I had to stop waiting to feel brave enough to try and just do it anyway.

You’ll probably never feel ready for that thing that will change your life. So let’s be terrified together. 

Just do it, scared.