Love the Versions of You That You Wish You Never Were

There was a time when I resented the teenager I used to be.

I resented her for not following her dreams. I was angry with her for not standing up for herself. For allowing other people to make decisions about her life. For being so desperate to be loved and accepted that she slowly gave pieces of herself away.

Then there was the twenty-something version of me.

I carried suitcases full of shame for her.

The drugs. The drinking. The cheating. The overeating. The relationships. The choices she made trying to find love, acceptance, and belonging.

And once again, I was angry with her for not standing up for herself.

By the time I reached my thirties, I had collected so many versions of myself that I was ashamed of that it felt like I was walking through life wearing a weighted suit.

Every mistake added another pound.

Every regret made it heavier.

For years, when I looked in the mirror, I didn't really see the woman standing in front of me.

I saw them.

The teenager who didn't follow her dreams.

The twenty-something who made choices I wasn't proud of.

The thirty-something who still hadn't figured it all out.

I judged each one of them through the eyes of the woman I had become, wondering why she didn't know better.

Why didn't she leave?

Why didn't she speak up?

Why did she make that choice?

Why did she keep looking for love in places where love didn't exist?

Why did she keep doing the same things over and over again?

For a long time, I thought healing meant letting all of that go.

I don't believe that anymore.

Maybe We Don't Need to Let Go

We hear those words constantly when we're healing.

You need to let it go.

Let go of the anger.

Let go of the shame.

Let go of the past.

But what if letting go isn't the answer?

What if understanding is?

It wasn't until recently that I stopped trying to push those younger versions of myself away and became curious about them instead.

Why did she make those choices?

And when I stopped judging her long enough to listen, the answers became pretty clear.

She was surviving.

She was doing what she had learned to do as a child.

She learned to read the room.

Keep people happy.

Avoid conflict.

Search for safety.

Find ways to numb what hurt.

Look outside herself for the love and belonging she didn't know how to give herself.

Of course she carried those things into adulthood.

How could she have known another way when no one had taught her one?

That doesn't mean every choice she made was healthy. Some weren't. Some hurt her. Some hurt other people.

Understanding our behavior doesn't mean pretending our choices didn't have consequences.

It means finally understanding the person who made them.

We Make Choices With the Tools We Have

It's easy to look backward with everything we know today and think:

I should have known better.

But I didn't know then what I know now.

None of us do.

At that particular moment, in that particular place, with everything I had experienced and everything I believed about myself, I made the choice that made sense to me.

Sometimes that choice was drinking.

Sometimes it was drugs.

Sometimes it was cheating.

Sometimes it was food.

Sometimes it was staying in a relationship I should have left.

Sometimes it was desperately trying to make someone love me.

Underneath so many of those choices was a need.

To feel safe.

To feel wanted.

To belong.

To stop hurting.

To feel something.

Or sometimes, to feel nothing at all.

When I began looking at my past through that lens, something shifted.

The shame started getting lighter.

Not because I erased what happened.

Because I finally understood the woman it happened to.

I Learned to Love Her

Healing taught me something I never expected.

I didn't need to get rid of those old versions of myself.

I needed to love them.

I needed to love the teenager who didn't stand up for herself because no one had taught her that her voice mattered.

I needed to love the twenty-something who searched for belonging in all the wrong places.

I needed to love the thirty-something who was still repeating patterns she didn't yet understand.

I even needed to love the versions of myself I wished I had never been.

Because those women weren't trying to destroy my life.

They were trying to survive it.

They were doing the best they could with what they had at the time.

And when I finally understood that, I could stop fighting them.

I could stop looking into the mirror and seeing a collection of mistakes.

I could finally see me.

All of me.

The beautiful parts.

The messy parts.

The choices I'm proud of and the ones I would never make again.

The woman I am today didn't appear despite those younger versions of me.

She exists because of them.

So maybe healing isn't always about letting go of your past.

Maybe sometimes healing is turning around, looking at every version of yourself you've spent years trying to run away from, and saying:

I understand why you did what you did.

I understand what you were looking for.

I understand what you were trying to survive.

And I love you anyway.

I did.

I learned to love every version of myself.

And somehow, that love made the weight I had been carrying for all those years a little easier to put down.