Grieving Who I Was While Making Peace with Who I Am Becoming

Recently, I began archiving more than six decades of photographs — from childhood through career, marriage, motherhood, divorce, reinvention, retirement, and renewal.

What I expected to be a simple organizational project quickly became something else entirely.

It became a confrontation with time.

As I sorted through images of a young mother raising children, a woman building a 36-year career at a fortune 20 financial services company, a wife navigating two previous marriages before the one I have today, and seasons of survival that demanded strength I didn’t know I possessed — I realized that I was not simply looking at photographs.

I was looking at versions of myself.

Some of those versions I recognized with pride.Some I greeted with compassion.And others… I grieved. Because memory has a way of awakening questions we thought we had already answered.

• Was I the best mother to my children?

• Did the choices I made create unnecessary hardship for them?

• Could their path have been smoother if I had chosen differently?

  
  

As I sat with these questions, I also saw something else. I saw growth where I once feared damage. My children are doing well in their respective careers and relationships.

Their journey was not without change or challenge — but it was strengthening. And now, as adults, I see capability where I once feared limitation.

Perhaps resilience was not something that happened in spite of our story —but something that was formed because of it.

Capturing memories of the past while focused on what is to become.