Day 3: The same, only different.

I’ve kept a journal since I was a teenager. As I’ve gotten older,  I have had the time and space to be more consistent. It took me about 18 months to fill a notebook. Now I finish my preferred Leuchtturm 1917 in about six months. Today, I revisited my journal from 1996 to 1997

Reading through journals is a trip. In 1996, I had two young children at home. I was just entering into my work in adult education and landing my first facilitation roles. I was balancing church, family and work. And mostly feeling like I was failing at everything. Self-compassion was not something I practiced.

Now, 30 years later, I can see how much I’ve changed. My self-worth is no longer tied to a belief that I need to pray more or read the bible more to earn God’s love. I am no longer as concerned about what other people think of me. My marriage is far more open and honest.

But some things haven’t changed. I still walk with anxiety, although I have better tools now to manage it. I still don’t love to exercise, although future mobility has proven to be the motivator that I need to be consistent!

What’s changed the most for me is that at some point in the past fifteen years, I’ve come home to myself. I can see 37-year-old Sandy looked outside of herself for most things. I was slowly moving from external authority to internal authority. Finances, fitness level, church attendance and anything else I was concerned with were not the real issue. The real work lay beneath the surface and in learning what those struggles were teaching me.

Perhaps one of the gifts of aging is discovering that becoming different doesn’t necessarily mean becoming free of the things that have always challenged us. Sometimes the real change is in how we relate to them.