I’ve Been Noticing Something

There is something about quiet that makes things visible.

Not necessarily new things.

Sometimes it simply allows you to see what has been there all along.

I’ve been experiencing a lot of that lately.

I’ll remember something I learned years ago. Something I tucked away will suddenly become useful. An old thought will return with an entirely different meaning. I’ll recognize a pattern between two chapters of my life that, while I was living them, seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

And I keep having these little moments of recognition.

Oh.

That’s what that gave me.

Not because I’ve suddenly figured everything out.

I haven’t.

And certainly not because I’ve decided that everything that has happened in my life needed to happen exactly as it did.

I don’t believe I have to make that claim in order to appreciate where I am.

Some things were wonderful.

Some things were painful.

Some things I would happily experience all over again.

Others can remain exactly where they are, thank you very much.

But with enough quiet and a little distance, I’m beginning to see my life less as a collection of separate chapters and more as a body of experience.

And that has changed the way I look backward.

I can look backward without needing to go backward.

For almost forty years, I stood behind a chair.

I loved being a hairstylist.

I used to call the salon my dollhouse because, truthfully, that’s what it felt like to me. I got to go somewhere beautiful, play with hair, make women feel beautiful, talk all day—and these wonderful living dolls paid me very well to do it.

It was a good life.

But when I look back now, I can see something I couldn't have fully understood then.

It was never only about the hair.

It was always the women.

For decades, women sat in my chair and talked to me.

About their marriages.

Their children.

Their bodies.

Their careers.

Their dreams.

Their disappointments.

The things they were excited about.

The things they were afraid to say out loud.

The things they were beginning to question.

And sometimes, the things they hadn't quite found the words for yet.

I listened.

I asked questions.

I noticed.

I cared for them the way I would have wanted someone to care for me.

I didn't know I was gathering anything.

I wasn't standing behind that chair thinking, One day all of this will become useful for something else.

I was simply living my life and doing work I loved.

But now?

I can see it.

All those years of listening taught me how to hear what a woman is saying underneath what she is saying.

All those conversations taught me something about the private lives women carry while appearing perfectly capable on the outside.

All those consultations taught me how much can change when a woman feels seen rather than instructed.

And all those stories were unfolding while I was living a story of my own.

None of that disappeared when I stopped standing behind the chair.

It came with me.

Maybe we carry more forward than we realize.

That is what I've been noticing.

We have a tendency to think that when a chapter ends, everything associated with it gets filed under the past.

But I'm not sure life works that neatly.

I think some things leave.

Some things should leave.

Some things have served us beautifully and simply don't belong where we're going.

But other things change form.

Experience becomes wisdom.

Wisdom becomes discernment.

Something we once survived becomes language.

Something we learned twenty years ago suddenly becomes useful today.

A dream we haven't thought about in years quietly taps us on the shoulder.

A version of ourselves we thought we'd left behind shows up carrying something we need.

And suddenly we realize:

Oh. You came with me.

I love that.

Because it means I haven't arrived at this chapter empty-handed.

I brought a lifetime with me.

Not every person.

Not every circumstance.

Not every possession.

Not every identity.

Not even every dream in the form I originally imagined it.

But I brought me.

And I brought what became mine through living.

There are things I dont need answers for anymore.

That may be one of the greatest gifts of this season.

I don't need to understand every ending.

I don't need to determine who was right about every disagreement.

I don't need to go back and prosecute the past.

I don't need to make everything that happened beautiful.

And I don't need to make everything ugly either.

Some things can simply be true.

That happened.

I loved that.

That hurt.

I stayed too long.

I left.

I learned.

I changed.

I miss that.

I don't miss that at all.

Both can be true.

There is an enormous amount of freedom in allowing the past to be a place you can visit without needing to move back in.

And maybe that's what distance has given me.

I can appreciate what something gave me without needing it back.

I can honor who I was without needing to become her again.

I can recognize what something meant to me without requiring it to mean the same thing forever.

And I can acknowledge the bruises without making them the story of my life.

They are evidence.

I have lived.

And lately, I’ve been noticing myself.

Maybe that's the real shift.

Because underneath all the things resurfacing—the memories, the lessons, the old ideas, the things I've saved, the dreams I haven't forgotten—there is another recognition happening.

I'm recognizing the woman who carried all of it here.

She's changed.

Of course she has.

She should have.

But I can still recognize her.

The little girl who dreamed.

The young woman figuring things out.

The mother.

The woman behind the chair.

The businesswoman.

The woman who loved.

The woman who was disappointed.

The woman who prayed.

The woman who started again.

None of those women needs to run my life now.

But I don't have to discard them either.

They contributed something to the woman sitting here today.

And perhaps that's why this season feels different.

I'm not trying to become someone completely new.

I'm meeting the woman all those versions of me have been becoming.

Slowly.

Quietly.

Without rushing to decide exactly what everything means.

I'm simply noticing.

What feels different.

What still fits.

What doesn't.

What has returned.

What I've carried.

What I'm ready to leave alone.

And what, after all these years, is finally beginning to make sense.

I don't know everything this next chapter will hold.

I don't need to.

For now, there is something deeply satisfying about sitting inside the life I have today and recognizing that I did not arrive here by accident or empty-handed.

I arrived with experience.

With stories.

With language.

With discernment.

With scars and softness.

With things I know now because I lived long enough to learn them.

And perhaps some things were never meant to make sense while I was inside them.

Perhaps some things require distance.

Perhaps some things require quiet.

Or perhaps there simply comes a time in a woman's life when she stops demanding that every chapter justify itself...

and begins noticing what it left in her hands.

I've been looking at mine lately.

And there is far more here than I realized.

Nothing was wasted.