The Late Bloomer Daughter

On this episode of All Daughters Considered, we’re speaking directly to the late bloomer daughter—the one who feels behind, overlooked, or out of sync with everyone else’s timeline.

This conversation explores the emotional tension of “not being there yet” and reframes it through a faith-centered lens. What if delay is not denial? What if this season is preparation, not punishment?

Through honest reflection and encouragement, this episode reminds listeners that growth is not always visible, timing is not always linear, and purpose is never rushed.

If you’ve been questioning your pace or your progress, this episode is an invitation to trust the process and embrace your unique journey.

From the pulpit to the pole, every girl is welcome.

📲 Connect with Valerie:

Instagram: @valeriedantus

TikTok: Valerie Dantus Music

YouTube: Valerie Dantus Music

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

On today's episode of All Daughters Considered, we're talking about the late boomer daughter. Yeah. The one who always feels like she's behind, the one watching others hit milestones, get chosen, move forward while she's still in process. The one who's prayed, waited, worked on herself, and is quietly asking God, when is it my turn? This episode is for the daughter who feels overlooked, but doesn't realize she's actually being prepared. Because what if you're not late? What if you're just intentional? What if God took his time on you, not to delay you, but to develop you? Today we're unpacking the beauty, the tension, and the purpose of blooming in your own time. So grab your blanket, your journal, and maybe something to sit by. Because all daughters can sit against now.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

This is for the girl, golden girl, got shot! And a lovely crown and star. This is for the girls over the world. Let me let me let me let me hear you. And don't forget it, neither.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Hey everybody, welcome back to All Daughters Considered. My name is Valerie Dantis, and I'm so excited to have you back. This is episode five. Alright, so if you've been rocking with me from episode one through four, welcome back. But if you're new, welcome. Thank you for joining us. And I know that you're gonna find something great. You're gonna leave this podcast with something to take you through the rest of this week. Alright. Speaking of joining us for the first time or rejoining us again, have you subscribed? Have you joined the family? If you have not, take some time to do that now so you don't miss any updates and all the other good things that we have coming to you on All Cutters Considered. There's so many plans, so many things in the works, so many things that I'm excited to share with you guys, but I don't want you to miss a thing. And matter of fact, while you subscribe, take some time and go ahead and send this to a girlfriend, send this to your cousin, send this to your mama, send this to your auntie, send it to a daughter. Alright, because I know that they will take something away from today's episode. Let me see how my blanket. Okay, I got my little drink on it's cranberry juice but skin corn. Okay. Um, we are talking about the late bloomer daughter. Ugh, this is a topic that I hold very dear to my heart, very near to my heart, because it is one that I understand firsthand and all the feelings that come with it. And if a lot of us are honest, there's so many women that have that experience of feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm clapping for everybody, and I'm happy for everybody, and I love to see all the updates and all the progress and all the things that are happening in the lives of the people that I love, but are suddenly wondering when it's their turn, right? So I'm super excited to get into that. But before we get there, grab your drink, grab your blanket. It's time for QTNA.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

We got some questions then.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Alright, so today's entry reads, Hey Valerie, I need some advice because I'm honestly a little conflicted, and I don't know if I'm wrong for how I feel. Recently, all of my friends got engaged and are going through a lot of life changes, like back to back around the same time. And I'm truly happy for them. I celebrate them and I love that for them because I've known them from the very beginning. But if I'm honest, there is a part of me that feels left behind. It's hard watching everyone step into this new season while I'm still single. I didn't want to bring the mood down or make anything about me, so I kind of pulled back for a little bit to process my feelings privately. But now one of my friends is upset with me. She feels like I've been distant and not as present during such an important time in her life, and it turned into a bit of an argument. Now I feel guilty on top of everything else. I don't want to be a bad friend, but I also don't know how to ignore what I'm feeling. Am I wrong for needing space? And how do I navigate this without damaging my friendships? Alright, well, first and foremost, I want to say that I commend you for being honest. There's so many people who are not able to be honest and truly name how they're feeling. I think, especially maybe in like a church context, we don't want to let the true name of how we're feeling come out. And you did. So that's commendable. What I do want to say firstly is you are human. So you are totally capable of feeling the feelings that you're feeling. It's not off, it's not weird, you're not just this person with three eyes. This is a human emotion. Envy or jealousy are human emotions. I didn't say they were good. I said they're human. Right? So sometimes when we're going through these things, we have this tendency of feeling like we it's just a unique experience that nobody else understands or knows what this feels like, or the only people who can relate to this are people who you might classify as terrible people. That's not necessarily the case at all. It's human to feel how you're feeling. Also, you are capable of being genuinely happy for your friends, but also feeling a little down, a little upset, and a little envious. You are capable of doing both. Now, that doesn't make you fake, that makes you human. There's this proverb that, or I don't know if it's a proverb, it's like a saying in Haitian culture that says, Ocon la poala, right? You gotta know over there to go over there, right? So if this is not a feeling that a person has ever experienced, they will not understand what I'm saying. If you've never been in a place where you have been watching other people win, it's not that you don't want to see them win, but you have been watching their wins and you're taking your L's, right? Or watching them and you're on the sidelines still waiting. It's not a feeling that I feel like a lot of people get. I get you, I understand. I very overstand because I've been there. And now I think I want to say that there's no problem as well with you taking time to process your emotions. You should take time to process your emotions. I'm a big believer in once you've named them, you need to process it. It's not a good feeling to carry. It's not something that you want to bring in the company of your friends or your loved ones while they're celebrating such great seasons of their lives, right? And it is important for you to get that out, whether that be through prayer, bringing it to the Lord, allowing him to help you purge your heart of those feelings, or whatever it is that you do, child, to manage that, you should absolutely do it. But now, let's right, let's address the tension. I think a big part of the tension is communication. There's nothing wrong with the fact that you needed space to process your feelings. What made it come off as wrong is because there was no communication there. You didn't express to any of the people in your life that you were leaving or that you were taking stepping away. All right. When there is no communication, we leave room for interpretation. That's just what happens, all right? That's how all of our brains are wired. Our brains are wired to answer the questions that we don't have answers for. Alright? And so from the perspective of your friend, maybe when she saw you pull away, it didn't read to her, it didn't translate to her, excuse me, how you were feeling. She got a totally different message. Hence her hurt and confusion that manifested as her being angry and maybe hostile towards you guys, towards you. Alright. So I think you left your friend in a very confusing place of her trying to piece together for herself why you pulled away from her. She knows she's super excited, she's looking for her dress, she probably wants her girls by her side, she wants the bridal proposal, she wants to have to put to put together boxes, she wants to do the whole nine, and you who are very important to her are not there. God would hurt anybody, seeing it from her perspective, which I understand that you do because you did state that you were guilty, but we're going somewhere, all right? It's not the disconnect, it's not that you're a bad friend, it's just that there was no communication, there's nothing to bridge your actions and your feelings. How you feel, she doesn't know how you feel, and then that bridge is that communication, right? So that communication and honesty is what protects relationships, right? You need to be a good communicator, you need to tell the truth. You can't fix what you hide, can't fix what you want to talk about. All of that. So there's that. I think that's why your friend was upset, right? Now let's talk about the envy portion. Alright, let's delve back into that, all right? Feeling that way does not mean that you don't want them to have what they have, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you want what they have, right? That envy is playing on the desire that is already inside of your heart. Do you understand? And that, while I don't want you to criminalize yourself for that because there's nothing wrong with that, you do need to understand that that feeling, if you let it, has the power to isolate you and will breed it's a gateway to so many other things: bitterness, jealousy, anger, resentment, right? Just from a little piece of envy that we let sit and fester in our hearts. So while you're pulling yourself away and doing all of that for the sake of preserving your friendships, you can be opening the door for a greater hurt for yourself, a bigger hole to dig yourself out of, right? So you have to be super careful when you're doing that. I'm just looking at my notes. So when envy isolates you, she has a way that she whispers in your ear, right? And brings up all of the factual, credible, confirmable facts about your situation versus the thing that you're envying, right? Which will ultimately make you feel like you're behind in life, right? And once you've gotten that feeling, it's hard to shape that feeling. So this is what I think you should do. Firstly, as it pertains to you and your friend, right? I would go to her and I would be honest with her. I'm not saying that you need to, you don't need to go there and just bash yourself, but be honest with your friend in the sense of telling her that you needed to process some feelings that were not directed to her, that were not directed to her success, that's not directed to her situation, but you needed to go address yourself, not patty cake it, not babysitting. You you wanted time to deal with envy at the root, right? I would share my heart and moving forward, be present in the ways that you can, do not disappear, still show up in small, intentional ways so that you feel that she feels that you're there, you feel her presence, she feels yours, and you're there, but you're not pushing yourself past limits that you can't go, right? Because I think while we live in a very individualistic culture, and that makes us lose focus of our community, and while you are improving your self-improvement, it's not bigger than the program, right? The goal is not to lose people while you're gaining under better understanding of yourself and your feelings. Now, if people leave, right? But you're not, I think it's very toxic to make it a goal to lose people when we are built and wired to desire and to want community. At our core, I feel like humans enjoy community, whether that's large or small. You want to be in community with people, and I think the last thing I really want to leave you with is just a thought that your season is going to come. I know you probably heard this your whole life. You're probably tired of hearing people say it, but your time will come. If that is for you, you will get it, right? So it's important to hold on to that while you're taking care of the wins that you do have. Because that's another thing envy is really good at doing. Envy is great at making you feel like what it is that you have is not as good as what you really want or what you want to get. And we cannot allow envy to rob us of the gratitude for the things that we do have in our lives. So you're not late. You're either in your season of preparation, or in this particular season, you got other tasks to do. Right? So I will go to a god in prayer, go speak to someone, deal with that envy, and then be there for your friend. Because when you look back, you really are gonna feel some type of way. You're gonna feel guilty, you're gonna regret that time that you spent away. So that's my two cents on this QTA. If you have a scenario, a story, a situation that you would like my opinion on, go ahead and write me at the email that is on the screen, or DM me on Instagram and give me your QTNA, and we'll see what we could do. Okay?

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Hot C, I'm in the hot seat. Hot seat, welcome to the hot seat. Hot seat, this is the hot seat. Hot seat, welcome to the hot seat.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

I've got my drink, I've got my notes. Let's get into the topic. I think that this is something that is kind of people we understand the concept, and we've got like our cliches that we like to say to people who we feel like are going through them, or you know, that we say to ourselves, make ourselves feel better. But it's very uncomfortable because it does reveal other feelings that we don't always want to acknowledge are there, right? So I really want to talk about this today, not only just to shed some light on it, but also to encourage people who find themselves in that space in life. It is it is hard. There's no other way to put it. Um, life as a late bloomer is difficult, and there's so many ways that the thinking, the thought process that surrounds being a late bloomer affects us that we could be talking about this all night, okay? But let's talk about really what being a late bloomer is. Okay, what is a late bloomer? But being a late bloomer is basically when you feel like um your life is not adhering to the societal norms, the timeline of society. You know, you gotta be done with college by this age, you need to be married by this age, you should be having children by this age, you should have this amount of money in the bank account by this age, you should retire at this age, you should have your life figured out at this age. When your life does not fall, based on the timeline of society, you are what society deems as a late bloomer, okay? And late blooming really deals with you feeling behind, right? You feel like, you know, you're late, right? But in 2 Peter 3, verse 8, it says that with God a day is like a thousand years, right? So really the question is not a question of timing, right? But because your timing is off from everybody else's, you feel like, you know, something's wrong with you when in fact your timing is not broken, okay? You're just different. God sent each and every single one of us on this earth to fulfill a purpose, right? And each of those purposes are attached to a different trajectory, a different life, a different journey. Your destination is not the same as your neighbors, right? Your destination isn't even the same. Your mother can have four daughters, and all four of them have a different life trajectory. And sometimes on yours, it involves not meeting certain societal markers at the times that you're expected to, right? Now, here's another thing that I feel like we are often um misinterpret, right? I think that when you are in this the category, when you are in the category of a late bloomer, the underlying concept is nothing is going on. Like my life is at a standstill, nothing I want is happening, therefore nothing is happening, and that could not be further from the truth. Your life is growing and evolving in ways that you cannot see. Just because you cannot see the things that God is doing does not mean that he's not doing anything. Right? We often hear the analogy of the seed, right? When you bury a seed in the ground, it goes through its whole process and it grows down before it grows up, and when it grows up, we see a beautiful flower. But what we don't often we don't see at all until we pull the flower is the great inner working of roots down in the ground, right? We hear that concept all the time, but we rarely, um, I think because they're cliches, and you know, we're sick of hearing all of the cliches and things that are meant to make us feel better, that we miss the revelation in those things, right? The understanding that what God is doing in me, He's doing in the dark, is huge. What does that mean? That means the longer I spend in the dark, the longer I spend in the shadow, the longer I spend in the silence, the deeper those roots are going. The deeper those roots are going, the more grounded I am becoming. Now, do you think the seed of an oak tree and the seed of a sunflower take the same amount of time to germinate underground? Of course not. How long, how far down do you think the roots of a cactus have to go versus the roots of maybe like um a carnation? You know, a wildflower. They're not meant to do the same things, their function and purpose are not the same. So of course an oak tree, of course, uh bamboo, of course, um a sequoia will dig deeper down into the ground to secure themselves because there's a height that is going that requires a sturdy foundation. But just like we were saying before, what envy will do is put you in a position to look away from what God is doing in the dark and have you focus on what's not yet happening. Helps you it envy has a great way of assisting your anxiety. Big tag team, even, right? Um, to talk to you all about how you're not doing as well as you could be doing. How, oh, look how tall, look how beautiful everybody else's flowers are growing, and you're still just a tiny seedling. Not understanding how far your roots go down, how strong those roots are. Many of us watching are seedlings. We just popped out of the ground. And looking around us, we see great tall bushes, flowers, flower beds, right? And looking at the size of their leaves and the beauty and the eloquence and the elegance of those flowers, we're misunderstanding how deep down our roots really are. Why is God taking this amount of time to grind to to to ground me? Imagine I'll use since we're on the plant, example on other plants, if you can't tell. Um Imagine a palm tree um being planted in a garden next to a bed of roses. And while that palm tree is coming up decides, oh my god, I want to be a bed of roses. What we know is that that palm tree will never be a rose. What we also know on this side of the story is that both palm trees and roses are beautiful in their own right. One does not need to be the other, we need both. But if that palm tree is not careful in its pursuit of becoming a rose, it'll die before it ever becomes a palm tree. That seed will not make it because it's not growing in the way that it needs to. So let's talk a little bit about how to change your viewpoint on your life as a late bloomer. Okay. Um, we're gonna dispel the lie of timelines, okay? The only timeline that matters is the timeline of God, right? We say that and we we comfort ourselves with it, but we don't necessarily believe it. But even from a social standpoint, timelines are different depending on what society you live in. So you could be late here and early somewhere else, just to show you how how fickle and ever-changing and unimportant those particular timelines are. In the 50s, the 60s, the timeline of uh the life of a woman or the life of a man in terms of what they needed to accomplish by what time is completely different from now, right? So if timelines were these uh big looming set-in-stone things, um, they wouldn't be so fickle to change with the advancement of society or the introduction of certain things, right? I read a statistic recently that um the percentage of women who are pregnant um close to or within or over the age of 40 has increased so much in the last um in these last few years. And one of the hugest, biggest sources of depression and sadness for women is not hitting that first baby mark by, I don't know, 30. I think a lot of people wanted to have all their kids before they turn, 30 years old. Um and here we are not no longer having that as a burden. There are women in their 40s, early 40s, mid-40s, late 40s, carrying their first child. Um, so embrace the fact that your timeline is off, your timeline is different. Okay, understanding that while you're feeling stuck, it's not necessarily because nothing is happening. God is building you, all right? He's healing you, he's preparing you. James 1 verse 4 says, Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete. I'm gonna read it again. James 1, verse 4 says, Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete. Okay, in uh 1 Peter 5 verse 10, um there are promises of restoration, strength, and steadfastness after a season of waiting. Let's read that. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 10 says, and got and the God of all and the God of all grace who called you in his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will make himself restore you, make you strong, firm, and steadfast. There is reward in waiting, and I don't mean reward as in a prize. Not every reward is tangible. Some rewards are intrinsic. Some rewards are um our gifts, our abilities that are developed within you within your time of waiting, right? God is not a slot machine, it's not like you're waiting and then you're just gonna cash out. But the things that gifts that he gives you, the tools that he gives you, improve on what it is he's called you to do, right? So this season that you are in, your season of waiting, right? Um, your season of waiting to bloom isn't just this time where you're sitting idly, but there's something that's that he's pulling on in you, right? All right, so while we're talking about that, we should also address the pressure to rush. I think we can all think of an instance, whether it be a relationship, whether it be a job, whether it be a home, whether it be a friendship, an interaction that you messed up or had a terrible experience with, because you pressured yourself to rush in or rush out of it, right? So feeling late can often push us to settle, to force ourselves, or to compare, right? And there is danger in that, right? Because again, we are not the same. An apple can't compare itself to an orange, an orange can't compare itself to a banana, they're all different, right? And so if they're judging each other by each other's standards, they'll never feel like they're enough, and they'll ultimately have to change themselves to fit into a mold that the spoiler is that they'll never fit into, right? But Isaiah 28, verse 16 says, The one who believes will not act hastily, do not rush the season that you're in. Your delayed bloom is in your preparation. God already scheduled your time. This is this, you gotta wait. A great example of this is um Abraham, Sarah. God promised him a child. That time became too long, you know. Sarah took matters in her own hands. Sarah's crazy as heck for that. Um so sorry. But she took matters in her own hand and decided to go about uh helping God with his promise, which um resulted satifini tamal, and that resulted in a whole mess of a situation. And guess what? They still had to wait for Isaac. They still had to wait for the time that God ordained for Isaac to come about, right? So what can we do? You gotta own your timing, and that is a lesson in and of itself. I'm not saying it's easy to do, because it's not. But the more you get to know yourselves, the more you get to know who you are. I think there is a beautiful thing, it is a difficult process of grief. Um, when you get to a point in your timeline where you missed every single marker. You didn't graduate when you were 22, you didn't get your big girl job when you were 25. You didn't meet the love of your life and get married at 25. You didn't buy the house before you got married. You didn't have your children or any of your children before the age of 30. You didn't move out of your parents' house by the time that you expected to move out of their house. When you have missed every single marker, a beautiful thing starts to happen. Yes, there's pain from grief, but there is a liberation that takes place when you realize, okay, well, I didn't meet this goal. So let's just wait and see what happens, right? There's a freedom that comes in not being bound to the timeline because you didn't need it. More than okay, so two things can happen. You can either be free or you can be shackled and and you can be somebody who does whatever they can to make up for the lost time by settling or rushing or pushing or forcing something that's not there. We don't want to do that. And if we have been doing that, we don't want to do it anymore. We want to own our timing. This is the doing of the Lord. This is the timing that he set for my life. He said in Jeremiah 29, 11 that he has plans for me, plans of peace and not of evil, plans to prosper me. And one of uh another translation says, plans to bring me to an expected end. So he knows where he's taking me. He knows where we're going. I have no idea. And since it wasn't any of the stops that I expected, I have no choice but to watch and see what he's gonna do and not add that extra pressure to myself to meet the expectations of anybody. Alright? So you're gonna make peace with your pace. Make peace with your pace. And Habakkuk says that the vision is yet, awaits, the vision awaits for an appointed time. The vision awaits for an appointed time, and it will not delay the day, the hour, the minute, the second that God has set for you to move into a different season, nothing can stop it. So trust what he says in Romans. Romans 8 28 says, All things work together for the good of those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. All things. I think we have tried to uh make this so logical and add in so many conditions and clarifications and this, that, and the third. When the Bible tells us all things work together for the good, all things work together for the good of those that love the Lord. That's the delay, that's the tears, that's the working through the envy late at night, that's the asking God questions that's being passed over for the promotion, that's being not chosen. All of those things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. These are all pieces meant to help you fulfill your purpose and either what they teach you or where they bring you. Oh, that's good. Have you ever realized on when you look back on the pathway of your life that in those denials, that pain or that redirection led you somewhere where you learned something that you took with you today? Something that inevitably contributed to the person that you are, whether that was a good or bad experience. I'm sure we all have something in our mind that, yes, that was horrible, but it led us right to where we needed to be to learn right what we needed to learn for that next door that God was gonna open. It's not that he doesn't open doors, he might not be opening the ones that you want. But he has a reason. We are all things. We're together for the good of those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. All things. So know that your season will come and that you will bloom. Okay? You'll be ready, you'll be strong, and you'll be confident because of what he built in you, because of how deep he dug your roots. I want to speak to that feeling of inadequacy because I know it very well. I'm sure you've asked yourself a million times. What's wrong with me? What about me do these people not like? Or what about me can these people not accept? Oof, what about me? Um, do I fix? Do I change? Do I improve so that I can walk through this door, so that I can have this opportunity, so that I can go to this place, so that I can do this thing. And I want to tell you right now that there's nothing wrong with you. You, I know you don't believe me. I know you don't believe me, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. That's any different from any other person that's imperfect and walking on this earth. It is just not time yet. Hold on. Wait a while, grow, change, experience where you are, and when your time comes, girl, it's gonna come. Okay. Oh my goodness. I feel like there's so much that I could say, but you know that I love to leave you with the word of the day. Alright? And so before we wrap up, the word of the day is prepared. Okay, your life isn't paused, delayed, or forgotten. You are not forgotten, you are being prepared. The late bloomer doesn't bloom late because she's behind. You are not blooming late because you're behind. You're blooming late because God is making sure that you're ready for the fullness of your assignment. So, celebrate the season you're in and trust God's timing. Don't shrink back just because the world is moving fast around you. Alright? So I want to say this to every daughter who feels like a late boomer. If you feel like you're behind, if you've been questioning your timing, if you've been wondering when it's finally going to be your turn, I need you to hear me. Are you listening? Lean in. Psalm 27, verse 14 says, Wait on the Lord, be strong, and take heart. Waiting is not weakness, waiting is not inadequacy. Waiting is not a miserable position. Waiting is a season of trust. Your life is not on pause, it's moving, you're progressing, you're processing. It's just in the dark. You're not late, you're not on everybody's timeline, you're on God's timeline. You are being prepared so that you can bloom in the way that God always intended for you to bloom. And when you do bloom, it's going to make so much sense why you take this long. Alright? I love you, girl. Have a great rest of your week, day, morning, whenever you're watching. And this is All Daughters Considered Episode 5. I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Bye.