I stopped trying to get back to my old self and started learning how to respect the one I am now

Dear Delyara, For a long time, healing meant return. Back to the old confidence. The old body. The old lightness. The old way of moving through life before certain losses, certain fears, certain years of overuse changed me in ways I didn’t want to accept. I don’t think that is healing anymore. I think it was grief wearing hope’s clothes. Now I am trying something much more difficult and much more honest. I am trying to stay with who I am now respectfully. The changed body. The overworked nervous system. The woman who has seen things, carried things, and cannot be asked to become innocent again just because she misses who she was before life got rougher. So I rest earlier. I speak more clearly. I stop romanticising endurance. I care for the body I have, not the one I wish I still possessed. I stop treating my changed self like a disappointing draft of the original. That shift has changed the emotional weather of my life more than any fantasy of “getting back to normal” ever did.