COME BACK TO YOURSELF

Every January seems to arrive carrying an assignment.

Change something. Fix something. Become something. Make a list. Set the goal. Build the better version.

I've done that.

I know how to become disciplined. I know how to achieve. I know how to decide where I'm going and begin moving toward it.

But lately I've been wondering if becoming always requires moving forward.

Maybe sometimes it requires coming back.

Back to the woman I was before I learned how useful it was to be capable.

Before accomplishment became a language I spoke fluently.

Before I became so good at knowing what everyone else needed that I stopped asking myself the simplest question:

What do I need?

There are parts of ourselves that don't disappear.

They get quiet.

The girl who laughed too loudly. The woman who loved beautiful things simply because they were beautiful. The part of me that could lose an afternoon doing absolutely nothing and not call it wasted. The woman who didn't need every choice to make sense on paper.

She's still here.

I've caught glimpses of her lately.

In music playing while I'm getting ready. In sitting alone with coffee before the world has had a chance to ask anything of me. In choosing something because it feels good rather than because it's productive. In noticing my own reflection and, for once, not immediately looking for something to correct.

I don't want this year to be about constructing another version of myself.

I want to know the woman underneath all the versions I've already created.

Maybe that's the strange thing about becoming.

Sometimes the next version of you isn't waiting somewhere ahead.

She's been waiting for you to come back.