I. The Pull
It would almost always catch me mid-step.
Warm. Weighted.
As if it had been waiting there long before I arrived—occupying the corridor, saturating the air, claiming the space without permission.
It didn’t drift. It possessed.
The mall around it was a blur of overexposed white tile and fluorescent glare. There were other storefronts, other people, the metallic hum of a crowd moving without intention, but I couldn’t have told you what they were. That fragrance acted like a visual silencer. It poured out of the storefront of Victoria’s Secret with such authority that the rest of the world retreated.
It thickened the air, almost slowing it down as it saturated a space that otherwise felt hollow.
It wasn’t something you consciously turned toward. It was almost like it caused you to recalibrate without your consent.
The further you stood from it, the harsher the world felt—clinical and unforgiving. But the nearer you drifted, the gentler everything became, as if the space itself were negotiating your entry.
There were no traditional doors on the front of the store. Only a large opening that revealed the latest styles, delicately laid out on display on top of the fixtures positioned at the mouth of the store. Everything was placed eloquently, somehow begging for attention and admiration simultaneously.
The opening at the front of the store felt less architectural than tidal, like a current disguised as an invitation.
Inside, soft yellow light pooled low and gold across lacquered wood and velvet-lined drawers. The pictures of the women that hung on the walls throughout the store were scattered, but strategically placed, making you feel as though you were being watched. The women in the pictures didn’t smile. They regarded you with a settled, integrated confidence—the kind that comes from inhabiting your body without negotiation.
At the age of fifteen, I didn’t have enough of the life experience that’s required for the kind of expansion to my emotions that would’ve allowed me to assign vocabulary to sensation, robbing me of the ability to accurately articulate what I was feeling. I just knew there were questions in my bones that I didn’t have the words for yet.
I was a rough draft.
And that store felt finished.
I didn’t yet know what it took to make something look that certain. To make something feel that complete.
II. The Alignment
I was twenty-six when I made the difficult decision to separate from my husband.
It was young love. Romance that quickly transitioned into a whirlwind of emotion, the kind that leaves an aftertaste of excitement under your skin. It was built on that specific, intoxicating brand of optimism that makes you believe gravity doesn’t apply to you—the same kind of optimism that can make someone on bath salts believe they can fly right before taking a fate-sealed leap from the rooftop of a tall building.
It’s a beautiful, dangerous delusion. It deceives you into thinking that once you jump, the ground won’t get any closer. And for a while, you believe you’re impervious to the fall. You believe you’re exempt from consequence.
But by the time you realize the ground is rising toward you faster than you anticipated, it’s already too late to turn back. You’ve already committed to the plunge, and surrender is the only thing you have left.
Standing at the edge of that divorce felt catastrophic and clarifying at the same time. Almost overnight, my life shifted from the safety of “we” to the sharp reality of self-reliance.
Where do I go from here?
How do I pay my bills?
What comes next?
When survival sharpened into decision, without certainty or guarantee, I moved toward what had always pulled me without giving it much thought. I already knew I loved the product, and belief in it was the first step to successfully selling it. I wasn’t convincing anyone of anything I didn’t already stand behind. I wasn’t trying to talk someone into buying something I didn’t already own myself.
On-the-job training dissolved the mystique I used to feel so intensely more quickly than I thought possible. Glamour gave way to metrics, inventory, and discipline. The image that once seemed to arrive so easily began to uncover the effort it took to maintain its perfection. The work that was required to make it feel timeless.
Beneath the lace was engineering.
Beneath the fantasy was structure.
And structure is rarely soft.
Floor sets began at closing on Sunday nights. The gates would roll down around six, the last customers stepping out still wrapped in perfume and gold light—the same atmosphere that once captivated me years ago as a teenager passing the entrance, unaware of how deeply that surrender to curiosity would alter my life.
Once the last customer walked out of the store and the gates came down, the dismantling began.
Mannequins were stripped.
Fixtures dragged across the tile.
Displays gutted.
New merchandise—which had already been staged in the back before closing for efficiency’s sake—was ready to move onto the displays that were actively in the process of being reorganized and reconstructed on the sales floor.
There was no pause between beauty and labor.
No obvious break between sophistication and sweat.
The scent of the fragrance was tainted, now mixed with the abrasive smell of Windex and Clorox.
The sharp plastic scent of packaging torn open now present as the new merchandise was carefully positioned throughout the store.
The gold lighting didn’t glow the same, didn’t feel as mesmerizing when you were the one standing on a ladder adjusting it.
The velvet drawers still looked elegant from the outside. But from the inside, they were inventory counts, missing sizes, inventory overflow needing to be stored away on the back shelving, and items that didn’t scan.
The store that once felt mysterious, almost unreachable, became operational. Physical. Exhausting, even.
In these moments, I didn’t realize how Victoria’s Secret was becoming a common thread. It wouldn’t be until years later that I would even recognize my experience there as the hinge to several transitions I was experiencing, which would later calcify into integrated identities.
In previous roles at different companies, I held the title of lead or key holder. But never manager.
Victoria’s Secret was the very first company where I’d been promoted into a management role.
For the first time, I wasn’t just responsible for my own performance.
I was responsible for people.
Schedules.
Sales plans.
Coaching conversations.
Closing reports.
Conflict.
Culture.
Slowly but steadily, I began learning how to give direction without shrinking. How to correct without apologizing. How to hold composure, even when I still hadn’t quite figured out the scaffolding of my own yet.
Victoria’s Secret started out as a mystery wrapped in fragrance.
It later represented expectation.
Responsibility.
Pressure that shaped my growth.
And somewhere inside all of that, I stopped apologizing for taking up space.
The First Run
I was on the closing shift one night. A night that started just like any other night, when something unexpected happened.
A young woman wandered in through the entrance of the store with a somewhat hurried but intentional presence about her. As I approached her to see if she needed help, she immediately stated that she was on the hunt for a running bra. VSX was a fairly new sports and workout line that the brand had recently introduced, intended to target women athletes who were looking for reliable, durable, and supportive clothing solutions.
As a solo runner myself at the time, I was a fan.
And I owned much of the product already.
It was an easy sell.
As the woman and I shopped for what she needed together, she went on to tell me about a running group she was involved with and eventually invited me to join for a group run in the coming weeks.
It was a fast yes.
The first run group met at six in the evening during the week. It was middle of winter, already getting dark when I parked near the trail behind the brewery the night I showed up for my first time.
The only person I knew was her—the client I had seen in Victoria’s Secret earlier that week.
When she saw me, she smiled, unable to hide her excitement, and said:
“I can’t believe you came! I invite people all the time and nobody ever shows up. I’m so glad you’re here!”
Up until then, I ran solo. Headphones in. If I didn’t feel like going, I didn’t have to. Most days, I showed up. Some days I negotiated long enough with myself until I effectively talked myself out of the run altogether.
When you’re only accountable to yourself, there’s always an exit if you give yourself the option for one.
That night, standing in the cold, surrounded by strangers who looked like they knew exactly where they were headed, I realized I didn’t want the exit anymore.
I didn’t want excuses.
I wanted accountability.
I wanted to be someone who showed up.
I didn’t know the trail at all.
I didn’t know if I could hold anybody’s pace.
I had no idea what I was stepping into.
But once we started moving, I settled into a rhythm—even though it wasn’t mine alone.
If I slowed, I felt it.
If I pushed, I felt that too.
The accountability shifted everything.
It didn’t feel transformative in the moment.
If anything, it felt uncomfortable.
But discomfort builds scaffolding under you before you realize you’re standing on something stronger.
That run group became the start of my consistency.
Consistency became mileage, ramping up.
Before long, ramped-up mileage became races.
And once I was signing up for races?
Running stopped being something I did and started becoming a part of who I was.
Like an identity I was stepping into without even realizing that’s what was happening.
Victoria’s Secret introduced me to leadership.
It taught me discipline.
And then it led me to community.
It introduced me to the version of myself that shows up even when it’s dark. Even when it’s cold. Even when it’s unfamiliar. Whether I’m tired, afraid, hurting, crying—
It turned me into the version of myself that shows up anyway.
III. The Rooms
I still think about those fitting rooms from time to time.
Not because of the lace.
But because of what I experienced inside of them.
Once guards were down and doors closed behind you — once the latch clicked into place — the mall dissolved into a faint background noise you couldn’t hear unless you were listening for it. You could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights soften. The world outside the door felt distant — as though it were entirely irrelevant.
And suddenly, you were alone with yourself.
Framed in what felt like an oversized mirror. Illuminated by the same soft lighting that first tempted you to walk into the store — only somehow brighter.
For a few quiet minutes, you were the center of the room.
Some women were efficient. They knew their size. They knew exactly what they wanted. Their presence in the store felt like a glimpse. Like an echo of an insignificant secret that was whispered into somebody’s ear. As quickly forgotten as it was heard. The exchange was transactional.
Other women, though. They stayed.
They entered the store with stories trailing behind them like invisible hems — a recent divorce, a new relationship, a body that no longer felt familiar, confidence worn thin by years of compromise.
They didn’t always say it outright. It surfaced in fragments. In tone. In hesitation. In the way they avoided looking at themselves at first.
They weren’t just there to buy something.
They were testing whether they could feel like a younger version of themselves again.
Or maybe like a version that at least felt familiar.
And when it worked, you could see it.
It wasn’t loud or flashy.
It wasn’t dramatic.
It was subtle.
In the way her eyes softened when the tension left her shoulders.
In the way she exhaled a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding in.
In the way she stood a little straighter without realizing she was doing it.
There’s something powerful about standing beside someone while they step back into a version of themselves they weren’t sure they still had access to.
It’s the same feeling I get now when I volunteer at the finish line of a race.
I’ll watch runners come through exhausted — sometimes in pain, sometimes disoriented. It’s like you can see months of grit written across their faces. The early mornings they’d rather stay in bed. The long miles they had to talk themselves into running before their feet actually met the trails in their training efforts. The quiet negotiations with themselves when quitting would have been so much easier. So much more comfortable.
And then you place the medal around their neck. You see them feel its weight as it settles against their collarbone.
Not heavy in ounces — heavy in proof.
Proof that they trained, even when they didn’t feel like it.
Proof that they showed up, when quitting would’ve been easier.
Proof that they finished something they weren’t even sure themselves they could accomplish.
And you see it register. It shows up in the expression on their face. In the tears that start to form in their eyes that they’d more easily dismiss as sweat. But they know…
I just did that.
When you feel that medal resting against your own chest — when you feel the literal weight of something you earned — it does something to you.
It anchors the accomplishment.
It makes it real.
It reminds you that you carried yourself across the distance.
And it all started at Victoria’s Secret. Working there taught me that helping someone move forward does something to you. It lights a fire.
It wasn’t until years later that I understood that working as a bra specialist was never about selling bras or lingerie.
It was about witnessing that shift — over and over again.
And each time I watched it happen for someone else, it made me believe — quietly, steadily — that it was possible for me too.
And, that?
That was the part that mattered.
Closing Reflection
Now, when I walk past the entryway of Victoria’s Secret, that familiar fragrance still pours out of the storefront, and it pulls me back into my younger self, as though I’m fifteen years old again.
But instead of being distracted by the mystery — instead of being tempted by the curiosity — I’m grounded.
Grounded in perspective.
Grounded in memory.
Grounded in experience that shaped me into who I am today.
And I feel grateful for the fifteen-year-old girl who wandered into that store all those years ago.
Copyright © 2026 Kimberly Beth Thomas. All rights reserved.