Finding my way Back

Your true self is there, waiting to be remembered. - Toni Morrison

Healing, I’m learning, is not a straight road forward. It’s a circling back. A grieving. A shedding. Some days it feels less like growth and more like standing still while the world keeps moving anyway. I keep waiting for the moment when things click—when the fog lifts and I recognize myself again—but most days, it’s quiet instead. Empty in a way that echoes. The silence is so loud.

I used to believe that losing pieces of myself was noble. That sacrifice meant love. That giving everything was proof I was doing it right. Somewhere between responsibility and survival, I stopped asking what I needed. I stopped listening when my own voice spoke up. And now, when I try to call her back, she answers only in whispers—memories, habits, instincts that feel half-formed and unfamiliar.

There is grief layered inside this process—grief not just for who I lost, but for who I was never allowed to become. For the softness that hardened. For the dreams that quietly learned to wait. Widowhood didn’t just take a person; it took a future, an identity, a rhythm of life I had built myself around. The aftermath is a landscape I don’t recognize, and some days I don’t recognize myself walking through it.

What I don’t say out loud often is how tired I am of being strong. Of enduring. Of carrying. Strength has become reflexive, not empowering. And yet, even here—especially here—I am still breathing. Still searching. Still writing myself into existence, one honest sentence at a time. Still hoping. Even though hope has not been kind to me at all.

Maybe finding myself isn’t about returning to who I was before everything broke. Maybe that version of me served her purpose and laid the groundwork for who comes next. I don’t know who she is yet. I just know that even in this lostness, something in me is refusing to disappear entirely. And for now, that has to be enough.

-KJKT