Nobody asks the coconut to stay young

I was standing in the middle of a coconut farm in Maui when it clicked.

Our guide lined up coconuts from earliest stage to fully mature, walking us through what was happening at each point. The young one was green, light, mostly water inside. Pleasant, but nutritionally pretty thin. The middle stage was where things got interesting. The water was converting into flesh, the shell was thickening and darkening, the fat was building. From the outside it could look like something was being lost. From the inside, the coconut was accumulating everything it had to offer. By full maturity it was dense, rich, and carrying the most nutritional value of its entire life.

The coconut doesn’t peak early. It earns its richness over time.

I’ve been thinking about that lineup ever since. Wine gets better. Cheese gets better. Hell, even a cast iron pan gets better. Why do we assume women are the exception?

The coconut doesn’t fight the process. It just becomes what it was always going to be: richer, denser, more of itself. The transition can feel like loss before it feels like anything else, but that’s just the water converting into something stronger. That’s the invitation here. Not to hold on to the early version, but to find out what you’re made of when you finally get there.