To the woman who feels like love might not be in the cards for her...

Asking yourself if Disney movies steered you wrong and romcoms were greatly exaggerating? Looking around and feeling like so many of your friends had seemed to found their people but when you look around the world there's a nagging feeling that it's completely empty of your people.

It's a lonely feeling. And yet, you're not alone. Because I was there too.

I've asked myself, "Are my standards too high?" and "Did they just get lucky?" I've compared myself to friends, wondering what was different about them that maybe I should strive more to be. I wondered if maybe it was my tactics - my Bumble openers, where I was meeting people, my approach. I looked at the problem every which way and then I got tired and abandoned the topic entirely.

I spent months saying, "It's just not a priority right now." I curled up in my chair with a good book. I laughed over baskets of fries with girl friends who saw me for me. I also cried - when the loved one in a movie got sick, when my friends walked down the aisle and when my grandfather died. I wasn't dating but I still had feelings.

I realized how easy it was to tune out those feelings when I didn't want to face them. But how they were there, even when I tried to pretend they didn't exist. They'd sneak up on me, clearing out my iPhone photos and finding an old video of a time that felt easier or sitting in the backseat of a car watching as my friend and her boyfriend held hands.

I could pretend that I didn't want love or that it wasn't a priority right now but one way or another, the feeling always came back.

I don't have some magical fairytale love story to tell you to convince you that love is possible, nay inevitable for you. That would be disingenuous and also, would not have convinced me either. If you're anything like me, you're a strong, independent, motivated woman and you like to see the facts. Understand how it works.

So here's what I can tell you: the friends of yours that are already in relationship are not better than you. They are also not guaranteed to be more happy in their lifetime because they found somebody earlier. They are facing their own brand of doubts and questions in their own way. They are not the answer to how to find what you're looking for.

The answer to how to find what you're looking for, how to find love is simple. Keep looking.

Just as a child in a corn maze doesn't know where the exit is but doesn't give up and accept the center of the maze as a sufficient outcome, you just keep going. If you feel like you are in a maze that's always hitting dead ends - try something new. Turn right instead of left. Will it feel wrong and odd for a little while, yes. But you will also show that smart, strong, independent brain of yours that there are more alternatives than it had previously believed.

I know the uncertainty scares you. It scared me too. Sometimes it still scares me. But that uncertainty means you're doing something daring. What? Looking for love isn't daring, you say. Why isn't it? You're putting your heart out there and trusting that one day, somebody will be ready to step up and take care of it. You're interacting with the world around you with an openness to being surprised, captivated by unexpected experiences and people.

You have sometimes let that uncertainty keep you from being quite so daring. You've taken quiet months and you've licked past wounds. And that's okay. I'm here to remind you to take care of yourself. To be kind.

But also not to let that uncertainty keep you out of the daring for too long.

Because that fear is really the only actual thing getting in your way of finding your person. Believing that it won't happen is the only thing that's making sure it won't.

It probably won't happen overnight. But by stepping into the corn maze again and this time turning right instead of left, you might start to feel what I have.

That it might feel different this time, better.

That there might be some corners to the maze worth giving a little more attention that I have before and some corners of myself worth a little more attention than I've given before. That I don't need to understand how it all works to keep going. And that, even without hard and fast evidence, a real belief that the exit to the maze is coming.

Stay open, my friend. Be kind to yourself. I'm here cheering for you!