My feet dangle in the lake water, and my head occupies the clouds. It is the Fourth of July. My family and friends have spent this holiday together at our house on the Lake of the Ozarks since I was born. But it feels like a different version of me sits on that dock every year.

I remember when, throughout my childhood, the lake meant wearing matching red, white and blue swimsuits with my sister and our cousins while we swam off the dock. We performed different skits until that got old, and we would climb up to the street to play soccer or stickball with a ball we had deftly fashioned out of duct tape.

I remember when the lake meant not caring about what I looked like, or what I was good at, or who I wished to be more like. I remember when the lake just meant having fun with people I really loved.

Last year on the Fourth, I held my five-month-old baby cousin Harper and watched as Brazil defeated Colombia in the quarterfinals of the men’s World Cup. Everybody else was down on the dock while I sat in the living room watching soccer — trying to identify with players half a world away felt easier in that moment than trying to fit in with my family.

Late in the game, Brazil’s treasured Neymar was writhing in pain on the television screen, having just fractured a vertebrae in his back. Harper played with my finger and laughed. My 30-year-old cousin Dirk texted me from New York: “No, not Neymar!”

“Crushing,” I wrote back. “This is his entire life. He was supposed to be Pele with this World Cup.”

“Did you see James [Rodriguez] crying at the end?” Dirk texted, in reference to Colombia’s best player. “It was the best parts of humanity.”

“Yes,” I texted. “So beautiful, yet cruel and excruciating. I was watching it while holding Harper, thinking, ‘Oh, little girl. You don’t know the emotions you will feel in this life.’”

This July, with the United States women winning the Women’s World Cup, my thoughts turned to what it means to a young woman unsure of herself to see such empowered, talented women in a deserved spotlight.

As I sat on the edge of the same dock a few weeks ago — family and friends bobbing and laughing carelessly in the water before me — I thought about how imperfect I felt, how the lake meant something different for me now. They must have noticed something was wrong. “Hey,” my cousin Jillian yelled to me. I lifted my head. “U-S-A! U-S-A! Just remember the awesome soccer game you’ll get to watch on Sunday!”

Night fell. I looked up at the stars and wondered, “Am I one of them? Is there any galaxy in which I’m a star?”

Sunday evening, July 5th, came and 23 women stepped onto a field in Vancouver to fight for their third World Cup star against Japan. I sat on the same couch as I did a year earlier with the same intentions: to feel more understood, to feel a part of something more. After just 16 minutes, the Americans had scored four goals, including a hat trick for Carli Lloyd. By game’s end, the score was 5–2, and the U.S. women were finally World Champions again, some 16 years after Brandi Chastain had become an American icon.

Confetti fell over them and a realization draped over me. During the commercial before the trophy presentation, my eyes drifted to the right of the television and landed on a portrait taken years ago of me, my sister and our four cousins. Fitting, I thought, that I should watch the 2015 U.S. Women break all sorts of records and soar through ceilings as I sat in this lake house, in front of that picture of my former self, in a time when I’m trying to find who I am.

These women are World Cup Champions. They are soccer royalty. But there’s one thing they are even better at than winning, one thing that resonates in the hearts of young girls and, yes, boys: these women are so good at being themselves.

Abby Wambach, Christie Rampone and Shannon Boxx accepted new roles in order to punctuate their dreams on their own terms, in fairytale fashion, and they did so with class.

Megan Rapinoe never stopped dancing.

Kelley O’Hara unleashed the sheer joy that comes with arriving by scoring your first international goal.

Carli Lloyd proved that while hard work doesn’t guarantee anything, it does put you in position to become a heroine.

Hope Solo, Ali Krieger, Julie Johnston, Meghan Klingenberg and Becky Sauerbrunn held opponents scoreless for 540 consecutive minutes to tie the World Cup record; I can’t remember the last time I went five minutes without worrying about how I could be better than I currently am, but now, I think maybe I can someday be my own image of better.

Sydney Leroux is the first woman to make me realize that tattoos aren’t just beautiful on certain people; tattoos can be beautiful for anyone who is inspired to express herself with purpose. Tattoos can be beautiful on me.

I will never be on the U.S. Women’s National Team. I will never play soccer at the highest stage or be one of their teammates. But I can be one of them; I can be a confident, thriving young woman.

I can play my own game.