small ways to find yourself inside a season you never planned for
a few weeks ago, i found an old photo of myself from 8yrs ago and felt jealous of her. she was standing in a kitchen i hated at the time (there was no oven), wearing a coat i no longer own, with no idea what was coming. i remember that version of my life well enough to know it was not golden. i was worried about money, i felt behind, i complained constantly about the lack of said oven. but memory had still managed to make her look freer than me.
there is a point in a difficult season where you stop wondering when things will go back to normal and start asking whether this is just normal life now. by then, you’ve learned how to manage(ish) inside it. you know what needs doing and which parts of yourself can be postponed until later, whenever that is. from the outside, you might even look capable. but inside, you keep waiting for the life that feels like yours to resume. the unsettling part is realising it may already have, just without the version of you that you expected to find there.
these are the things i did when i felt lost inside a season i could never have imagined:
1. write down what changed without asking your permission
some changes announce themselves so loudly and brashly that everyone knows exactly where to place the sympathy, but others can slip into your life through the side door and rearrange things without you noticing while you’re busy coping. either way, eventually you stop trusting a plan, become careful around someone you once relaxed beside, and a future you spoke about freely becomes a subject you avoid because you can’t bear to hear yourself hope again. write down the moment, then write down what became harder afterwards. we are very good at counting what happened and much worse at counting what it took from us, which is how a person can survive a year and still wonder where they went.
2. find the last place you remember feeling like yourself
go back to the last time you remember feeling fully inside your own life, but resist the urge to turn it into evidence that everything was better then and instead treat it like a bookmark. look closer at what was actually happening. maybe you had more room to be silly, or somebody was listening properly, or you were you making something with no audience waiting or approval needed. we miss old versions of ourselves without noticing the conditions that allowed them to appear, and then blame the present for failing to produce her by default.
3. make one small space unmistakably yours
choose a corner that has started to feel like evidence of everything you have been getting through and return some of yourself to it. start small with the corner by the kettle or your bedside table if that feels like the right place. clear away the receipts, half-used things and empty cups (so many cups) that have gathered there, then give the space something that belongs to the you who lives here now rather than the thing you are surviving; a photograph in a little frame, supermarket flowers in the vase you usually save for visitors. whatever brings a little smile to your face. rooms can become so full of what needs dealing with that they stop reflecting the person inside them. and reconnection refills when a part of your space feels like yours again.
4. do something with no strategic value whatsoever
buy the magazine because the cover makes you happy, even if there is nothing inside that will give anything your life. take photos nobody will see, spend an afternoon making something that has no future beyond the afternoon itself. adulthood has a way of asking every pleasure to provide references; a walk should improve your health, reading should teach you something, even rest is expected to return us in better condition. after a while, we forget how much of a life is built from little useless interests and amusements. the parts of us that feel most alive have never been especially concerned with proving they deserve the time.
5. notice what you have postponed until life feels normal again
i used to be especially talented at saving life for later, and sometimes i still am. i’d tell myself we’d have the big bbq once the house was finished, wear the nicer clothes when there was somewhere fancy to go to, or do the new thing once my head felt a bit clearer and i wasn’t so tired. there is always a sensible reason, which is sneaky because this is exactly how postponement gets away with so much. hard seasons teach you to conserve yourself, but they can also make pleasure feel badly timed, as though enjoying anything before the bigger problem is solved would be getting above your station. and we often don’t realise it’s happening until another year passes, the house still isn’t finished, and the life you were waiting to return to has been happening without you.
6. stop expecting yourself to become the old you again
the old you belonged to a life that no longer exists in quite the same way. she had not sat in that waiting room, still believed certain people would come through and could make plans without first checking how much hope they required. of course you miss her. she was lighter because she had not carried this yet, but turning her into the version you need to recover keeps you looking backwards for proof that you are still in there. you already are. you just know too much now to fit inside the outline she left behind.
7. make one choice that feels like a clue
choose something small enough to do before fear turns it into the usual committee meeting. there might be one thing you keep circling back to after producing a perfectly sensible case for leaving it alone. when you’ve spent years becoming good at accommodating, wanting anything that might inconvenience the current arrangement begins to feel slightly frivolous, sometimes even reckless. so you keep choosing the life that causes the least trouble, until it becomes very efficient at continuing without you. the clue is usually the thing you never quite manage to forget.
8. bring back one tiny thing that feels very you
when life becomes demanding, we start editing ourselves down to whatever is easiest to maintain. i used to paint my nails fun colours all the time, then stopped somewhere along the way without ever deciding to. recently, i bought a new yellow polish and remembered how satisfying it was to look down and see a little choice i had made purely because it felt like me. but this is how small parts of us disappear, without a farewell or any official announcement. they simply stop making it into the week. bringing one back can feel oddly reassuring, as though adulthood has not swallowed quite as much of you as you thought.
when i look back at that photo, i no longer want to climb back into it. sure, she had things i miss, but she was also standing at the foot of mountains she couldn’t yet see. all i really envied was the feeling that her life still belonged to her, before so much of it became shaped by what happened next.
it’s hard to remain connected to yourself inside a season you never planned for, especially when so much of the day belongs to whatever needs handling next. i just hope you don’t mistake that distance for disappearance. you are still here, even on the days when all you can access is the practical version of yourself. that version counts too, even if she might not be the one you miss.
p.s. which point do you feel yourself needing most right now?
—hannah x
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this is so helpful and so necessary! thank you for this Hannah 🤍🤍
Definitely point 2 (find the last place you remember feeling like yourself) and as a consequence focusing on point 3 this week