Two letters. One syllable. Almost fifty years to figure out how to use it.

NO.

For most of my life, I’ve been the person who says yes. Yes, I’ll help. Yes, I’ll take care of it. Yes, of course I have time!

Spoiler alert: I didn’t always have the time.

From childhood expectations and questionable decisions to career ambitions, motherhood, and learning to let go of things I genuinely love, this episode is about my complicated relationship with a word I’ve spent most of my life avoiding.

And somewhere along the way, I discovered something unexpected: sometimes saying no isn’t about disappointing others. It’s about finally making room for yourself.

Am I an expert at saying no now? Hell no.

But I’m learning.

Welcome to Episode 18 of Unsolicited Advice from a Nobody. Real stories, questionable wisdom, and a little sarcasm along the way.

What happens when something you love doing quietly becomes a much bigger part of your life?

For me, it started long before Zumba. It started with a ten-year-old girl dancing alone in a dark living room, imagining a huge stage filled with people who somehow knew exactly the same choreography she did.

Years later, I walked into a Zumba class in the U.S., discovered Melissa, fought my way to the front row (as one does), and fell completely in love with it.

Then came years of classes, moving countries, having children, putting the idea of becoming an instructor aside, picking it back up at 45, surviving my first certification choreography disaster, teaching my first class, creating a slightly terrifying color-coded playlist spreadsheet, learning to actually listen to my students, and eventually finding a community I never really knew I was looking for.

This episode is about Zumba, yes. But it’s also about what can happen when something that simply makes you happy stays with you long enough.

And about discovering that maybe being a Nobody doesn’t mean you’re nobody to everyone.

Have you ever looked at your life and thought… wait, where the hell did I go?

I started writing this episode in the middle of the night in Corfu, surrounded by beautiful beaches, my children, friends and everything that should have made me happy — except I wasn’t.

Somewhere between moving countries, motherhood, family, responsibilities, aging, perimenopause (or, as I prefer to call her, peri meni) and simply living life, I realized I didn’t quite recognize the woman living mine anymore.

So this episode isn’t really advice. It’s personal. It’s messy. It’s about missing the woman I used to be, trying to understand the woman I am now, and realizing that maybe I don’t need to have all the answers yet.

For once, the Nobody doesn’t have the unsolicited advice.

Maybe you do.