Returning to Little Women

Every time I return to the pages of my favorite book, I find a different story waiting for me. Sometimes, it is the companion I needed as a child. Other times, it is the one I need as a wife, a mother, a daughter, or a woman trying to make sense of her place in the world.

That book is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

When I was young, I loved Jo and her independence and ambition. She inspired me to write my own stories and poems in countless notebooks after mornings of reading books since dawn. Like her, I dreamt of what it would be like to earn my own keep with my hard work. And like her, underneath the bravado, I too yearned to be seen and heard.

“I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream."

As I grew older, it was no longer Jo who spoke to me most. Years later, Meg helped me make sense of what I was feeling when I compared myself to others. It was her story that made me appreciate what I had while also figuring out ways to build self-esteem from the inside. How timely the reminders that external validation can be fleeting and fickle.

The more she saw of Annie Moffat’s pretty things, the more she envied her and and sighed to be rich. Home now looked bare and dismal as she thought of it, work grew harder than ever, and she felt that she was a very destitute and much-injured girl, in spite of the new gloves and silk stockings.

Amy met me on the steps of career growth and ambition. On the one hand, I enjoyed the work that I was good at, finding flow and rhythm. On the other hand, the time I spent there was time I didn’t spend elsewhere. There were years when achievement became the measure of a good life. Yet every victory carried a quiet question in its wake: what had I given up to get here? Amy taught me that ambition is not simply the courage to pursue something. It is also the willingness to live with the opportunities left behind. Success brought satisfaction, but it never exempted me from longing. Even in seasons of achievement, part of my heart remained elsewhere—with family, with home, with the life waiting for me beyond the office walls.

“Ambitious girls have a hard time, Laurie, and often have to see youth, health, and precious opportunities go by, just for want of a little help at the right minute.”

Marmee stays beside me as I navigate marriage and motherhood. Some of the hardest lessons of adulthood have not been about finding happiness, but about choosing grace when happiness feels far away. Like Marmee, I have learned that character is not something we possess. It is something we practice. Marriage has taught me that love is not only found in grand declarations but in daily acts of repair. In the apology offered after harsh words, the hug after a difficult conversation, the choice to begin again after disappointment. As I have grown older, I have come to appreciate that kind of love more deeply—the kind that shows itself not in grand gestures but in consistency.

“I had a hard time, Jo, and shed a good many bitter tears over my failures; for in spite of my efforts, I never seemed to get on. Then your father came, and I was so happy that I found it easy to be good. But by-and by, when I had four little daughters round me, and we were poor, then the old trouble began again; for I am not patient by nature, and it tried me very much to see my children wanting anything.”

Beth waited for me until I understood loss. As I bade goodbye to loved ones, grief found its way into my heart and stayed there. Certain songs, foods, and places now carry echoes of people who are no longer here. Familiar places became landmarks of memory. Ordinary moments took on a tenderness they never had before. Beth taught me that grief is not merely the pain of losing someone. It is the enduring love that remains after they are gone. Grief has taught me that love does not end when a life does. It simply changes form.

How dark the days seemed now, how sad and lonely the house, and how heavy were the hearts of the sisters as they worked and waited, while the shadow of death hovered over the once happy home.

In many ways, each of these women carried me home to a different part of myself. I continue to return to Jo because she reminds me of who I was, who I am, and who I hope to become.

As a girl, I admired her ambition.

As a woman, I admire her wisdom.

The older I become, the less I am drawn to achievement for its own sake and the more I find myself drawn to quieter things: a peaceful home, meaningful work, deep friendships, a sleeping child in my arms, an ordinary afternoon shared with those I love.

For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister’s life - uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which ‘smell sweet, and blossom in the dust’, the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all.

Perhaps that is why I keep returning to Little Women. The book has never changed, but each time I open it, I have.