I stopped waiting to become the woman I was before

Dear Delyara, For a long time, I thought healing meant return. Back to old energy, old confidence, old appetite, old certainty, old softness. Back before the years that changed me in ways I still haven’t fully made peace with. Now I think that longing was keeping me slightly unkind to the self who is actually here. The changed body. The overused nervous system. The woman with less innocence and more knowledge. The one who needs different rhythms, different boundaries, different forms of care than she did before. I am trying to honour her instead of measuring her against a ghost. That shift has softened the way I live inside myself. And that matters more than almost anything.