Change Maven Musings: When Things Come Back

I’ve noticed a phenomenon playing out in my life over the past few months, and once it dawned on me that it was happening, I’ve been feeling a mixture of emotions. Comfort, relief. Energy for what’s coming. Somber over opportunity lost or passed by because…life.

Things have been coming back to me. People, opportunities, ways of being that have been long absent from my life are finding a way back. It started with a funeral I attended in my hometown a couple of months ago for the dad of one of my childhood friends. Going back often brings a tinge of anxiety for me, especially when it involves being around the church crowd I grew up in. It’s always a lesson in being OK with folks not knowing - or needing to know - the whole story, resisting the pressure to overshare to bridge gaps in time, awareness, or understanding, and taking my plate of ham and butter sandwiches, ripple potato chips, some form of tuna casserole, bars and cup of watery lemonade to a table in the fellowship hall and be ready with my safe answers to the question, “So…how are you doing?”

Except it wasn’t like that.

I genuinely enjoyed seeing these people I’d grown up with, who are a part of my history, of who I am. They came up to me, gave me a hug, asked how I was doing (and genuinely wanted to know), and reminded me of stories and memories I hadn’t thought of in years that were a hoot to relive. I moved about the room like a candidate running for office (without the politics part), and left with an invite to attend an all-camp reunion at the summer camp where I was both a camper and counselor, and a few offers to get together down in “the Cities” that I intend to follow up on. I felt a sense of place I hadn’t felt in a while. And: I chickened out and didn’t tell my old pastor that I got divorced, which I now think is hilarious (apparently the pre-marital counseling didn’t take). Regardless, old assumptions were checked. A reminder that maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was.

The second occurrence was attending the 50th birthday party of one of my dear friends from college. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, and part of it was due to our friendship of being “family friends” when I was married. Once I became unmarried, I think we all felt a little like “well…what the fuck do we do now?” so time passed as we navigated the transition. I missed her, missed them, and didn’t really know what to do. So when I got the text from her husband asking to send pictures/stories so he could collect them as a gift for her, I dug through my old pictures, found a few gems from college (really, really glad I came of age in an analog era), and sat down to write her a letter. Which turned into me ugly crying as I reflected on our friendship and all that we’ve navigated together - and apart - over the years. Seeing them again made me realize your true people never really go away, they ebb and flow with you, as needed. She and I went out the next weekend to brunch and did some vintage-shopping, and it felt like old times. Assumptions checked (again). Also again, maybe things weren’t how I thought they were.

The trend has continued over the past few weeks in reconnecting with a family member I hadn’t seen in years, and an invitation to check out a yoga studio that would bring me back to my first yoga love/style of yoga that I haven’t practiced in years. Last week, I took a solo trip to Greece, my first international trip in almost eight years. The sense of adventure, of independence, of rightness in going back to Europe was a high for the entire trip. I loved hearing Greek spoken around me, loved being in a part of the world whose culture and people have existed for thousands of years. I saw a version of myself from when I first lived abroad in France, the year after high school, who was fearless, willing and able to make it work in unfamiliar contexts and surrounds, and who felt joy and excitement in simply being there. Exactly as I remembered it being all those years ago.

Self-reflection questions:

• Has there been someone or something from an earlier version of you/your life that has come back into your life recently? How did you respond upon its arrival? Do you want it to stay? Or are you OK with it going away again?

• Are there parts of you that you’d like to see more of in your day-to-day life? What are those parts? How/where can you carve out more space for them? What does that look like/feel like for you?