There was a time in my life when I didn’t recognize myself.
And I don’t mean that in the way we sometimes say we’ve changed or outgrown an old version of ourselves.
I mean I genuinely didn’t recognize the woman I had become.
I remember wondering how I had gotten there. How had my life reached a place that felt so unfamiliar? How was I experiencing things I had never experienced before? Things I never imagined would become part of my story.
Because that’s exactly how I felt.
This wasn’t supposed to be my story.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
I knew who I was before that season. I knew the things I wanted out of life. I knew the woman I had been, and I knew there were things I still wanted to accomplish.
But somewhere along the way, I found myself in circumstances I didn’t understand.
And the hardest part was that I was trying to understand them while I was still living through them.
There were things happening in my life that nobody knew about.
Abuse. Pain. Fear. A darkness that I didn’t know how to explain.
And while all of that was happening behind closed doors, life outside those doors kept moving.
So I kept moving, too.
I showed up. I handled what needed to be handled. I tried to make things appear normal, even when nothing about what I was experiencing felt normal to me.
People could see me, but they couldn’t see what I was carrying.
And I had become so accustomed to struggling privately that sometimes I didn’t even know how to put what I was feeling into words.
I was confused.
I was hurting.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, I felt like I had lost myself.
What made that season especially difficult was that I didn’t have a point of reference for it.
I had never experienced anything like it.
I couldn’t understand why I was there, why things were happening the way they were, or how my life had become something so different from what I knew.
I just knew it didn’t feel like me.
It didn’t feel like the life I wanted.
And deep down, even when I was struggling to recognize myself, there was still a part of me that believed it wasn’t the life I had to accept.
That part of me mattered more than I understood at the time.
Because there were moments when the darkness became more than emotional.
My physical safety was at risk. And there were moments when my own thoughts became a frightening place to be.
That’s a difficult truth to put into writing.
For a long time, those were experiences I carried without people knowing just how serious things had become.
But I don’t want to tell a story about healing while pretending that every season I’ve survived was simply a difficult chapter.
Some seasons were much darker than that.
And one of those seasons brought me to a place where I had to confront whether I was going to have a future at all.
I chose life over death.
I wasn’t willing to die in my circumstances.
I didn’t know exactly what the next chapter would look like. I didn’t have a perfect plan for how I would get from where I was to where I wanted to be.
But something in me kept saying there had to be more.
More than what I was experiencing.
More than what I had come to tolerate.
More than the woman I was becoming while trying to survive.
And in those moments, I found God in a way that became deeply personal to me.
Not because everything suddenly changed.
Not because the pain disappeared overnight.
But because my faith gave me something to hold on to when so much of my life felt uncertain.
There was something within me reminding me that I was worth more than what I was going through.
I couldn’t always explain that feeling.
I just knew I wasn’t supposed to give up on myself.
And slowly, that belief began to matter more than the circumstances that had made me question my worth.
I started believing that another life was possible.
That I could still have the things I dreamed about.
That the woman I remembered wasn’t gone forever.
And that I deserved the opportunity to find her again.
I won’t pretend the process was simple.
Choosing life was one decision. Learning how to live beyond that season was another.
There were things I had to work through. Parts of myself I had to rediscover. Ways of thinking and surviving that didn’t simply disappear because my circumstances changed.
And I learned that sometimes getting out of a situation is only the beginning of finding your way back to yourself.
But I kept going.
Not because I was strong every day.
Not because I always knew what I was doing.
I kept going because I believed there was still more life for me to experience.
And because, with God’s help, I was beginning to believe in myself again.
Looking back, I understand something I couldn’t fully see then.
That wasn’t the first time life had required me to find my footing again.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
I’ve experienced different seasons of starting over. Different circumstances. Different kinds of loss, disappointment, uncertainty, and change.
Some were visible.
Others were deeply private.
And here I am, in another season of becoming.
Still learning.
Still figuring things out.
Still working toward the life I want for myself.
There was a time when I might have looked at having to begin again and wondered what I had done wrong.
Why am I here again?
Why do I have to start over?
But I’m learning to see it differently.
Just because I’ve had to begin again more than once doesn’t mean I keep ending up where I started.
I’m not the same woman I was during that dark season.
I’m not even the same woman I was during the last time life required me to start over.
I’ve lived. I’ve learned. I’ve made decisions. I’ve experienced things that changed how I see myself and what I want for my future.
And although I still have things I’m working through, I no longer believe that being in a season of change means my life is falling apart.
Sometimes it means I’m finally making room for a life that fits the woman I’m becoming.
I share this part of my past because I don’t want to speak about healing as though it’s always beautiful, inspiring, or easy.
Sometimes finding yourself again begins in places you never wanted to be.
Sometimes it begins when nobody knows you’re struggling.
Sometimes it begins with nothing more than the belief that you deserve to see another day.
And sometimes, years later, you find yourself facing another beginning.
But this time, you know something you didn’t know before.
You’ve made it through seasons you once couldn’t imagine surviving.
And you’re allowed to keep choosing a future, even when it looks different from the one you originally pictured.
I’m not sharing this because I’ve reached some perfect place where everything makes sense.
I’m sharing it because I’m still here.
Because I chose life.
Because my faith helped carry me through a season when I struggled to carry myself.
And because I know now that my story didn’t end in the place where I almost lost myself.
This isn’t my first time rebuilding.
And if life requires me to begin again, I hope I remember what I’ve learned along the way.
I don’t have to have every answer.
I don’t have to pretend I’m okay when I’m not.
And I don’t have to become the woman I used to be in order to recognize the value of the woman I am today.
I can keep becoming.
I can keep believing.
And I can keep choosing the life I know I’m worthy of living.
⸻
A Little Ray’diance ✨
Sometimes the most important changes begin long before anyone else can see them. Sometimes they begin with a quiet decision to believe your life is worth more than the circumstances you’re living through. And sometimes, simply being here to tell your story is a reminder of how far you’ve come.
— Ray’diance
