We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
— Anaïs Nin
I keep returning to these words from Anaïs Nin, especially the image of being made up of ‘layers, cells, constellations.’ There is something so honest in her understanding that we do not grow in a straight line. Time may pass chronologically, but we do not. We may become deeply wise in one area of our lives while remaining tender, uncertain, or even childlike in another. We can be capable, accomplished, and trusted by others, yet still find ourselves responding to a present experience from a much younger place within us.
The older I become, the more clearly I recognize this within myself. I can hold space for another person during an experience of enormous vulnerability and feel completely grounded in what I know, then find myself in another part of my life feeling unsure, tender, or unexpectedly pulled into an old story. I have learned that one does not make the other untrue. Our strength and our vulnerability are not separate identities. They belong to the same constellation.
We never completely leave our former selves behind. The child, the adolescent, the mother, the caregiver, the seeker, the wounded one, the wise one, and the woman still becoming may all live within the same body. At different moments, different parts of us come forward. One may feel ready while another needs more time. One may be strong enough to carry others while another is quietly asking to be held. Sometimes we meet life as the person we are today. At other times, something pulls us into an earlier memory, longing, or fear. Our past, present, and future are not as separate as we like to imagine.
I have witnessed this so many times in my work with women during pregnancy. A woman is growing a new life while undergoing an enormous transformation of her own. She may feel powerful and vulnerable, joyful and frightened, grounded and completely unfamiliar to herself, sometimes all within the same day. As she prepares to become a mother, the daughter she once was may suddenly become very present. Memories of how she was cared for, or how she was not cared for, can rise alongside questions about the kind of mother she hopes to become.
After more than two decades of supporting women through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum life, I continue to be moved by how much of the woman’s own life enters the room with her. Birth is not only the arrival of a baby. It is a threshold in the identity of the person giving birth. Something new begins, something familiar changes, and something may need to be grieved. Postpartum life reveals even more layers. A woman may feel an immense and indescribable love for her baby while also missing her freedom, her sleep, her body, her relationships, or the person she understood herself to be before. Gratitude and grief can exist together, just as devotion and exhaustion can. One truth does not erase the other.
The caregiving years bring their own constellation. So many women find themselves caring in several directions at once, supporting children, aging parents, partners, clients, students, and communities. I understand this season in a much more personal way now. I know what it is to care deeply for others while trying to remain present to my own changing life. We become practiced at noticing what everyone else needs. We learn how to organize, soothe, anticipate, carry, and keep going. We may appear extraordinarily capable while some unseen and exhausted part of us quietly wonders, Who is caring for me?
This may be one of the great paradoxes of maturity. We become better at carrying responsibility, yet sometimes lose touch with our own needs along the way. I have had to ask myself whether growth always means becoming stronger or more capable. Perhaps, at this stage, it also means recognizing what can be put down, allowing someone else to help, or giving myself permission to rest before everything has been completed. This has not always come naturally to me. I am often more comfortable offering care than receiving it, but life continues to teach me that receiving is also part of our belonging to one another.
Midlife and menopause have brought the quieter, long neglected parts of myself closer to the surface. The body changes. Energy changes. Sleep, desire, emotion, and our tolerance for what no longer feels true can all shift. Roles that once gave us a sense of identity may no longer fit quite as comfortably. What we accepted or worked around for years may suddenly feel impossible to ignore. Although this season is so often described in terms of symptoms and loss, I have come to understand it as a powerful period of reckoning and return.
The questions begin to change. Who am I now? What have I set aside? What is asking to be lived? Creativity, sensuality, anger, rest, spiritual longing, play, and purpose may begin calling us back. Parts of ourselves that went quiet while we were busy tending to life may ask for our attention again. I do not believe this is regression. It feels more like remembrance, the recovery of something essential that was never truly gone.
My work with older adults has also changed the way I understand growth. Our culture often speaks as if growing belongs only to the young, yet I have witnessed some of the most meaningful growth in people whose bodies are slowing or becoming less predictable. A person can experience physical limitation while becoming more emotionally free. Memory may become less reliable while intuition deepens. The need for support may increase while the desire to live honestly becomes stronger.
There is something humbling about watching a person adapt to a body that no longer responds as it once did. It has taught me to look beyond what appears to have been lost. I have seen courage in the smallest movement, dignity in receiving assistance, and wisdom emerge when the need to perform or prove begins to fall away. Aging asks us to reconsider the identities we have built around productivity, appearance, independence, and usefulness. It also asks us to recognize that receiving care does not diminish our dignity. It reveals how deeply our lives depend upon one another.
This does not make aging easy. Loss is real. Bodies change. People we love leave us. Certain possibilities narrow, and we may grieve the lives and abilities we once knew. I feel this more deeply as I accompany my own mother through the changes of aging and as I become more aware of my own. Yet I can also see how life may continue widening inwardly. We may become clearer about what matters, more willing to forgive, and less willing to perform a life that no longer feels true. We may finally understand that strength is not always found in holding everything together. Sometimes it is found in allowing ourselves to be changed.
My work as a death doula has further deepened this understanding. Even near the end of life, we are not necessarily finished growing. There can still be reconciliation, understanding, surrender, humor, tenderness, and love. A person can be approaching death and still be becoming. Fear and peace may both be present, along with grief and gratitude, attachment and release. From first breath to final breath, we are continually meeting who we were, who we are, and who we may still become.
This is also why healing so rarely follows a straight path. I have seen this in my own life and in the lives of the people I have been privileged to support. The return of an old fear does not mean we have failed. A wound reopening does not erase the healing that has already taken place. Sometimes life circles us back to familiar places because we are now able to meet them with greater awareness, different resources, or a little more compassion.
The past may pull us backward. The future may call us forward. The present asks us to remain long enough to notice which part of us has arrived and what it may need. Maturity may not mean outgrowing our younger selves. It may mean learning to recognize and care for them without allowing every old wound to direct our lives.
Healing may not be about becoming one perfectly resolved version of ourselves. It may be learning to live compassionately with all that we are, including the layers, contradictions, memories, longings, and many selves who have accompanied us here. We grow through our seasons and our relationships. We grow by moving forward, circling back, remembering, releasing, and beginning again. We grow unevenly, partially, and often mysteriously.
Sometimes our deepest growth comes when we finally make room for all that has been living within us all along.