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There is a strange kind of grief that comes with becoming a different version of yourself, and I don’t think we talk about that kind of grief nearly enough. We celebrate growth as if it is always beautiful. We talk about healing, becoming stronger, setting boundaries, finding ourselves, and finally learning how to choose peace. What we don’t always talk about is everything we have to leave behind in order to get there. Sometimes growth means looking back at the person you used to be and realizing you don’t recognize her anymore. Sometimes it means missing pieces of yourself while simultaneously knowing you can never go back to being that person. There are versions of ourselves that were created simply to survive certain seasons of our lives, and when those seasons end, we have to figure out who we are without constantly being in survival mode.

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about all the different versions of me that have existed throughout my life. The girl who questioned whether she was enough. The girl who replayed conversations in her head for hours, wondering if she said too much, said too little, or somehow could have handled things differently. The version of me who apologized just to make an argument end, even when I wasn’t the only person who needed to apologize. The version who carried other people’s emotions and problems as if they were somehow her responsibility. I spent so much time trying to understand everyone else’s perspective that sometimes I completely forgot to ask myself how something made me feel.

I used to believe that loving someone deeply meant fighting endlessly to keep them in my life. I gave chances because I believed in people. I forgave because I knew what it felt like to make mistakes. I explained myself over and over because I thought maybe if I could just find the right words, people would finally understand where I was coming from. I held onto relationships, friendships, situations, and even certain expectations because walking away felt like admitting defeat. It took me a long time to realize that sometimes walking away isn’t giving up at all. Sometimes walking away is finally admitting that you’ve done everything you can, and continuing to lose pieces of yourself isn’t going to change someone else.

Eventually, I had to learn something that sounds simple when written down but was incredibly difficulty to actually live by: loving someone should never require losing yourself.

Becoming Someone I Didn’t Know Yet

Growth didn’t happen for me through some beautiful, life-changing moment where everything suddenly made sense. I didn’t wake up one morning completely healed, confident, and certain of who I was. There wasn’t a specific day when all of my insecurities disappeared or when I suddenly stopped caring about what other people thought. My growth happened slowly, painfully, and sometimes without me even realizing it was happening. It came through disappointment, heartbreak, difficult conversations, uncomfortable realizations, and moments when I had no choice but to keep moving forward even though part of me wanted to stay exactly where I was because at least it was familiar.

It happened during nights when my mind wouldn’t stop racing and I replayed every decision I’d ever made. It happened through conversations that left me questioning whether my feelings were valid. It happened through losing people I thought would always be there and learning that sometimes walking”forever” doesn’t mean what we think it does. It happened through motherhood changing the way I looked at myself and everything around me. It happened through grief teaching me how quickly an ordinary day can become a day you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Somewhere between everything I lost, everything I survived, and everything I was still trying to understand, I started becoming someone different.

I started realizing that peace doesn’t always come from receiving an apology. Sometimes the apology never comes. Sometimes the person who hurt you will never fully understand what they did, and sometimes they’ll understand perfectly and still never acknowledge it. For a long time, I thought I needed certain people to admit they hurt me before I could move forward. Now I’m beginning to understand that my healing doesn’t have to depend on someone else’s willingness to take accountability. Sometimes peace comes from accepting what happened, deciding what you learned from it, and refusing to allow it to control the rest of your story.

I also started realizing that closure doesn’t always come from having one final conversation. Sometimes there is no perfect goodbye, no explanation that suddenly makes everything hurt less, and no magical collection of words that answers every question. Sometimes closure is something you have to give yourself. Sometimes it’s deciding that you’re done reopening a wound looking for an answer that may never exist. And sometimes choosing yourself isn’t selfish – it simply means you’e finally listening to the part of yourself you’ve spent years telling to be quiet.

Motherhood Changed Something in Me

Becoming a mother changed something inside of me that I don’t think I’ll ever completely be able to explain. Before motherhood, I could convince myself to tolerate certain things because they were happening to me. I could make excuses, tell myself things weren’t that serious, or believe I could handle a little more. But becoming a mother made me look at my choices differently because suddenly my life wasn’t only mine. There was this tiny person looking to me for safety, comfort, love, and guidance, and eventually she’s going to grow into a young woman who will form her own ideas about what love, respect, relationships, and self-worth are supposed to look like.

That realization made me start asking myself questions I hadn’t seriously considered before. What do I want my daughter to believe she deserves from other people? What do I want her to do when someone continuously makes her feel small? What do I want her to believe about boundaries? What would I tell her if she came to me one day crying because someone she loved made her question her worth? Would I tell her to keep accepting something simply because she loves that person, or would I remind her that love and respect are supposed to exist together?

Then came the question that was much harder to answer: Am I showing her those things through the way I’m living my own life?

Because one day she is going to understand far more than I realize. She’s going to learn about relationships not only from advice I give her but from the relationships she watches around her. She’s going to learn about boundaries by watching whether I have any. She’s going to learn about confidence by watching the way I speak about myself. She’s going to learn about forgiveness by watching how I forgive others, and she’s going to learn about self-respect by watching what I choose to accept and what I finally decide is enough.

I want her to grow up knowing that having a soft heart doesn’t mean allowing people to continuously hurt it. I want her to know that forgiveness doesn’t always mean giving someone unlimited access to you. You can forgive someone and still decide that they no longer belong in the same place in your life. You can love someone and recognize that loving them from a distance is healthier. You can say no without being cruel. You can create boundaries without hating anyone. You can choose yourself without becoming selfish, and you can walk away from something that hurts you without pretending the good memories never existed.

Most importantly, I want her to know that she should never have to make herself smaller just to make someone else comfortable. I want her to know that her voice matters, her feelings matter, and the right people won’t require her to abandon herself in order to keep them. But if I want my daughter to believe those things someday, I have to learn how to believe them for myself today.

Grief Has Changed Me, Too

Grief has also played a huge role in changing the person I am. Loss has a way of dividing your life into two completely different versions: who you were before something happened and who you became afterward. There are losses that don’t simply make you sad. They rearrange something inside of you. They change the way you think about time, relationships, memories, and all of those ordinary moments we assume we’ll get to experience again tomorrow. Grief teaches you in the cruelest possible way that life doesn’t always give warnings before everything changes.

There are days when grief feels distant, almost like something I’ve learned to carry quietly in the background, and then there are days when something small brings it rushing back. A song. A memory. A photograph. A certain date. Something funny happens and for half a second you think about telling someone before remembering that you can’t. Those moments remind me that grief doesn’t disappear simply because time continues moving. You just learn how to carry it differently.

I’ve also learned that healing doesn’t mean forgetting the people we’ve lost or pretending their absence doesn’t hurt anymore. You can laugh until your stomach hurts and still miss someone. You can experience an incredible moment and still wish they were standing beside you to see it. You can be genuinely happy with the life you’re building and still feel sadness for the people who aren’t physically here to experience it with you. Grief and gratitude can exist inside the same heart, and learning to hold both at once has been one of the hardest and most important lessons of my life.

Maybe that’s another version of myself I’ve had to let go of—the version who thought healing meant eventually reaching a point where things wouldn’t hurt anymore. I’m starting to understand that healing isn’t about erasing pain. It’s about learning that pain doesn’t have to be the only thing you feel.

I’m Still Becoming

I wish I could end this post by saying I’ve completely figured myself out, that I’ve reached some point where I no longer struggle with anything I’ve written about. But that wouldn’t be honest, and if there’s one thing I want Between the Words to be, it’s honest. I still overthink. I still have moments where I question myself. I still care too much sometimes, and I still give people the benefit of the doubt longer than I probably should. There are days when I feel strong and completely sure of myself, and there are other days when I feel exhausted, overwhelmed, emotional, and unsure about what I’m supposed to do next.

There are still pieces of myself I’m trying to understand. There are still things I’m healing from, things I’m learning to forgive, things I’m learning to release, and things I’m learning to accept. But maybe that’s the entire point. Maybe becoming isn’t something that eventually ends. Maybe there isn’t a final version of ourselves waiting somewhere in the future. Maybe we’re constantly becoming, constantly learning, constantly outgrowing things, and constantly meeting new versions of ourselves as life gives us new experiences.

The version of me from five years ago needed different things than I need today. She believed different things. She tolerated different things. She dreamed about different things. And I’m sure the version of me five years from now will look back at who I am today and realize there were still so many things I didn’t understand yet. Instead of being afraid of that, I’m learning to find something beautiful in it. It means I’m still growing.

I’m learning to stop expecting myself to have every answer. I’m learning that surviving something doesn’t mean it will never affect you again. I’m learning that healing isn’t linear and that having a difficult day doesn’t erase all the progress you’ve made. I’m learning that being strong doesn’t mean never crying, never struggling, or never needing someone. Sometimes strength looks like admitting you’re tired. Sometimes it looks like asking for help. Sometimes it looks like finally saying something out loud that you’ve been carrying silently for years.

And maybe the biggest thing I’m learning is that I can appreciate who I used to be without wanting to become her again.

Because she got me here.

The scared version of me got me here. The heartbroken version got me here. The angry version, the grieving version, the exhausted version, the version who stayed too long, the version who finally decided she’d had enough, the version who became a mother, the version who questioned everything, and the version who kept waking up and moving forward even when she wasn’t sure where she was going—they all played a part in creating the person writing these words today.

I don’t hate those versions of myself anymore. I don’t look back and wonder why she wasn’t stronger or why she didn’t know better. I’m learning to understand her instead. She made decisions based on what she knew, what she felt, what she feared, and what she believed at the time. She was trying to survive things that the version of me standing here today has had the opportunity to learn from.

And for that, I think she deserves a little grace.

Turning the Page

I’m ready to meet the woman I’m becoming. Not the woman everyone else expects me to be. Not the woman who stays quiet because speaking up might make someone uncomfortable. Not the woman who spends her life trying to prove that she’s worthy of love, respect, effort, or understanding. I don’t want to keep exhausting myself trying to convince people to see my heart when the right people won’t require a presentation to understand that it’s there.

I just want to become more of me.

Still imperfect. Still emotional. Still learning. Still healing. Still figuring things out as I go. Still capable of making mistakes and changing my mind. Still carrying pieces of every version of myself that came before this one, but no longer allowing those versions to decide where I’m going next.

And maybe that’s what Between the Words is really going to become—a place where I can explore those pieces of myself that don’t always make it into everyday conversations. The thoughts we keep inside because they’re difficult to explain. The grief hidden behind a smile. The lessons buried inside heartbreak. The strength we don’t recognize until we look back at everything we’ve survived. The words we almost said, the feelings we couldn’t explain, and the stories that exist somewhere between who we were and who we’re becoming.

So here’s to the versions of ourselves we’ve had to leave behind.

They weren’t failures. They weren’t wasted years. They weren’t people we should be ashamed of.

They were chapters.

Some were beautiful. Some were painful. Some lasted much longer than we expected, and some ended before we were ready. But every single one of them brought us here.

And sometimes, the only way to discover who you’re becoming is to finally give yourself permission to turn the page.