We're All Pieces of People We Once Were
In the winter, I sleep with a 13.5 tog duvet on my bed. That sentence means almost nothing to almost anyone from the United States. But for me—a gal who studied abroad at Leicester—I'm one of the few yanks who gets it.
And, no, I didn't suddenly become a northerner. I'm still quite Southern in speech. But all my Uni mates called me a "yank" for being from the States.
Thinking about this brought me to the title of today's post—we're all pieces of people we once were.
I'm not Rachel who attended University and rode a patternoster every day to class. I'm also not Rachel who rose at 5AM every morning to get to the newsroom for morning meeting. But, I'm also not Rachel who took pregnancy test after pregnancy test for years praying for a yes.
I'm not any of those people anymore. And yet they're all still a part of me.
It's the same for you. You're not the person you were on your lowest day. You're not the person you were in your darkest hour.
Yes, those bits of you are still in there—but that's not you anymore. You're who you choose to be in this moment.
Those past versions of you are in there, yes. We're all pieces of people we were, people we met, people who influenced us, people who hurt us, people who embraced us.
But how that forms is up to us. How we live with those pieces is up to us.
You are the only one who gets to define you. So why not love you with all your heart? Why not choose to be the person you want to be?
It's funny how your life changes when you reframe things like that. For me, it's liberation and acceptance and distancing and embracing all at once.
I'm still defining me. And it's glorious.
