nature

A familiar pattern showed up this week wearing different clothes. I recognized it almost immediately, but my reaction to it is what has been bothering me ever since. In the moment, I saw clearly what was happening. At least I thought I did. In my imagination, this story ended very differently. I was calm. Direct. Slightly frosty. The boundary was reinforced. The matter was handled. My heels clicked confidently, maybe even triumphantly, into the sunset. Instead, I froze. But why did I freeze? That old pattern in new packaging should have felt old. Instead, it stopped me in my tracks and left sooty fingerprints on my soul. The behavior itself wasn’t new. Unfortunately, I became acquainted with that particular kind of behavior at an age when I should have been worried about multiplication tables and sleepovers. Realizing how quickly an old fear can find its way into the driver’s seat completely unsettled me. One minute I was a grown woman looking at a situation with decades of experience behind her. The next, some younger part of me seemed convinced that we were back in familiar territory where caution, silence, and stillness were the safest options available. Whew. That realization sat like a stone in the pit of my stomach. It isn’t because I expect perfection from myself. Life cured me of that expectation a long time ago. What was jarring was discovering that I believed this particular chapter was further behind me than it apparently is. So much so that by the end of the week, what began as an emotional reaction had become a physical one. I’m talking nausea, sleeplessness, and the kind of frustration that follows you from room to room. What has stayed with me all week is the realization that understanding a wound and being untouched by it are two very different things. Somewhere along the way, I started treating this part of my story like something that belonged entirely to the past. I knew where it came from. I understood how it had shaped me. I had spent years untangling its impact on my life. And boy, this week challenged that belief. Here I was, completely blindsided by my own reaction. Before my rational mind had a chance to weigh in, some younger part of me had already taken over. For several days, I couldn’t decide which bothered me more, the other person’s behavior or the fact that it still had the power to reach across decades and peel back layers of confidence and strength I had worked so hard to build. One thing this experience has revealed is how far I had drifted from some of the practices that help me stay connected to myself. There was no dramatic decision to stop writing, stop meditating, or spend less time in the garden. Life had simply filled the available space the way life often does. Because I was doing well and felt steady, it became easier to convince myself that those things were luxuries rather than necessities. This week challenged that assumption. Over the past several days, I’ve found myself lingering in the garden longer than usual. I’ve spent more time writing. More time sitting quietly instead of immediately reaching for a distraction. Not because those things magically erase old wounds. They don’t. But they do help me find my footing. They remind me that the frightened little girl who froze is not the only voice in the room. They reconnect me with the woman who has spent years building a life, a perspective, and a set of choices that simply didn’t exist back then. I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the imbalance this experience introduced. If I’m honest, some days it still feels as though the dust hasn’t completely settled. What I do know is that somewhere between the garden, the page, and the quiet, I started feeling a little more like myself again. And for now, that feels like enough.