all the women i have been

sometimes i think womanhood is just meeting yourself over and over again under different lighting.

the little girl.
the teenager.
the woman in love.
the woman pretending not to care.
the wife.
the mother.
the ambitious woman.
the exhausted woman.
the woman who stayed.
the woman who left.
the woman who almost disappeared entirely beneath everyone else’s needs.

they all still live inside me somewhere.

and for years i treated my past selves like evidence in a trial.

that version did not know any better.
that version was too loud.
that version loved too hard.
that version tolerated too much.
that version cared too much what people thought.
that version performed confidence while privately unraveling.

i was constantly trying to distance myself from old versions of me as if evolution required cruelty.

but lately i am trying something softer.

gratitude.

because every woman i have been kept another version alive long enough to become possible.

the teenage girl who survived humiliation.
the young mother who survived exhaustion.
the woman navigating heartbreak while still packing lunches and answering emails.
the woman sitting in doctor’s offices trying to hear the word cancer without psychologically leaving her body.
the woman learning leadership in rooms not built for softness.
the woman who kept laughing even while grieving.

all of them carried me forward.

even when they were messy.
even when they were reactive.
even when they made choices i would not make now.

especially then.

growth is beautiful, but there is a danger in becoming so obsessed with healing that you begin speaking about former versions of yourself without compassion.

i do not want to become a woman who only loves herself in retrospect once she has become easier to admire.

i want to love the woman in progress too.

the woman still figuring it out.
the woman still healing.
the woman still becoming.

because the truth is i am not one woman.

i am all the women i have been.

the soft ones.
the sharp ones.
the terrified ones.
the beautiful ones.
the grieving ones.
the ambitious ones.
the lonely ones.
the hopeful ones.

all of them built this life with their bare hands.

and despite everything,
i think they did a remarkable job.