Seasons of Growth

I used to think that growth was supposed to feel good. That becoming a better version of yourself would come with a kind of brightness, like sunlight through a curtain on a quiet morning. But growth, I have learned, often feels more like winter than spring.

There have been seasons in my life where I could not tell if I was evolving or simply falling apart. Where everything I thought I knew about myself started to feel uncertain. Where the friendships I leaned on shifted and the dreams I held close began to look different up close.

What I know now is that those seasons were not failures. They were the necessary undoing that comes before becoming. A tree does not apologize for losing its leaves. It does not mourn the bare branches. It is simply making room.

Growth asks you to let go. Of who you were told to be. Of the version of yourself you performed for other people. Of old wounds you kept visiting because at least they felt familiar. None of that letting go is easy. Most of it hurts in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has not been through it.

But on the other side of that discomfort is something real. A quietness. A clearer sense of what matters and what does not. A relationship with yourself that no longer depends on what anyone else thinks.

If you are in a hard season right now, I want you to know it is okay to not have it all together. It is okay to be in the middle of something you cannot yet name. You are not behind. You are exactly where you need to be.

The spring will come. It always does.