A Letter on Knowing Yourself
My Dearest Friend,
Today is our last full day here.
I am writing this from my sister’s house, where our things have slowly spread out over the past few weeks in the way they always do—shoes by the door, a suitcase half-unpacked in the corner, a stack of folded laundry waiting to be sorted into what goes with us and what still needs to be mailed. It is the kind of lived-in that only happens when you know you won’t be staying long, when everything is both settled and temporary at the same time. By this afternoon, I will have folded clothes back into suitcases instead of drawers again.
There are boxes stacked near the door that still need to make it to the post office, and a list on my phone that I keep reopening, convinced I am forgetting something important, though I could not tell you what it is. My toddler is playing somewhere just out of sight, moving easily through a house that is not hers but has been kind enough to hold her for a little while anyway. Tomorrow, we will leave, and today feels like it exists in that strange space just before the leaving happens, where everything is both finished and not quite done, where you are still here but already aware that you won’t be for much longer.
We have been living like this for weeks now, moving between borrowed spaces, sleeping in beds that are not our own, learning how to exist with only what we can carry and what someone else is willing to share. It has become familiar in a way I am not sure I like, familiar enough that I no longer hesitate before asking, “Where did we put that?” because I already know the answer will involve a suitcase or a bag or a pile that does not belong to any one place.
There is a kind of quiet unraveling that happens when you live this way—not dramatic, not even particularly noticeable at first, but steady. Bedtime shifts later than it should because there is always one more conversation, one more thing to finish, one more disruption to what used to be routine. Mornings begin earlier than anyone would choose, because light comes through different windows and noise carries in unfamiliar ways. Meals happen when they can instead of when they would, shaped more by the flow of the house than by any rhythm we once kept. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I have felt it—that subtle, persistent awareness that I am not fully living in the ways that feel most like me.
For a while, I assumed that was just part of it, another version of change, because this life does change us. Parenthood changes us, grief changes us, time changes us. There are parts of who I am now that did not exist years ago, and parts of who I was then that I have had to let go in order to become who I am now. Some of those changes feel like growth, some feel like loss, and most feel like a complicated combination of both. But lately, sitting in spaces that are not mine and living days that do not quite belong to me, I have begun to wonder if that is only part of the story.
Because every time life strips something away, I find myself reaching for the same things—not deliberately, not because I have decided I should, but instinctively. I miss knowing the shape of our days, not in a rigid way that leaves no room for spontaneity, but in the quiet, steady way that allows everything else to settle around it. I miss the kind of rhythm that makes a day feel held instead of scattered. I miss having a place for things to belong, not because the things themselves matter so much, but because there is a kind of peace in knowing where something rests when you are not using it, in not having to search for what you need in the middle of an already full moment. And I miss opening my space to other people—the ease of saying, “Come over,” without having to consider whether there is room, whether it is appropriate, whether the space is truly ours to offer, the kind of connection that happens not because it is planned perfectly, but because it is made possible by the simple act of having a place to gather.
For a long time, I thought those were just the things I was missing, the predictable result of living in between one place and the next. But today, folding laundry in a house that is not mine and preparing to leave a place that has been generous enough to hold us, I am beginning to wonder if they are something else entirely—not just the things this season has interrupted, not simply evidence of what has been taken, but small reflections of who I am.
Because it has not happened once; it has happened every time. Every move has rearranged the details of my life, and every time, without fail, I have found myself rebuilding the same kinds of things—not the same rooms or the same routines or the same relationships, but the same patterns underneath them: the same desire for rhythm, the same instinct to gather, the same need to create something that feels like steadiness even when everything else is shifting.
I do not think this life created those things in me. I think it revealed them. And right now, those parts of me are not gone; they are simply difficult to live out. They show up in the frustration when bedtime stretches too late for too many nights in a row, in the quiet irritation of not knowing where something is when I reach for it, in the way I catch myself mentally arranging a space that does not belong to me as though I could make it feel more like home if I just shifted things slightly. They show up in what I miss, and I am beginning to understand that what we miss is not always about what we have lost. Sometimes it is about what has been uncovered.
I may not get all of it back at once. The next place will not immediately feel settled, and there will be more days like this—more borrowed routines, more waiting, more piecing together a life that does not yet feel fully formed. I know that now in a way I did not in the beginning. But I also know something else: I will recognize myself again, not all at once, but slowly—in the first evening that settles into a rhythm we can keep, in the first time I reach for something and know exactly where it is, in the first moment a space feels like something I can offer to someone else. Those things will not make me into who I am; they will simply give me room to live it out again.
The Lesson
Some seasons change us, and some seasons reveal us, and part of learning to live this life is understanding the difference—not so that we can hold on to everything as it was, but so that we can recognize what continues to return, again and again, no matter where we find ourselves.
To the Spouse in a Season That Doesn’t Feel Like Themselves
If you find yourself in a place that feels unfamiliar—not just in location, but in rhythm, in routine, in the way your days unfold—I hope you will pause before assuming you have lost something essential. Perhaps what you are feeling is not the absence of who you are, but the absence of the space you need to live that out.
What do you find yourself reaching for? What do you miss in the quiet, unguarded moments? What do you wish you could build again, even if you cannot yet?
Those things are not small, and they are not incidental; they may be some of the clearest reflections of who you are beneath everything that changes. You may not be able to live all of it today, but that does not mean it is gone. It may simply be waiting for you, the same way it always has.
