Every Version of Myself Was Necessary: Learning to Forgive the Seasons That Shaped Me

From the Candle's Glow

There is a version of you who still lives in every chapter you've survived. The version still exists in old photographs tucked inside drawers. In songs you skip because they still know your name. In places you avoid because your heart remembers before your mind does. They aren't gone because they simply live in another season.

For years, I believed healing meant becoming someone entirely different. I thought I needed to erase the woman who trusted too easily, the girl who loved people who couldn't love her back, and the child who believed everyone would stay. I thought strength meant leaving them behind, but somewhere along the way, I realized something that changed everything. Healing is not abandoning who you used to be. Healing is thanking her. Every version of me carried something the next version would need. The child carried wonder, the teenager carried hope, the young woman carried love, the broken woman carried endurance, the awakening woman carried truth, and the woman I am becoming carries them all. Not every version deserved to be forgotten.

We spend so much of our lives criticizing our former selves. "I should have known better." "Why didn't I leave sooner?" "How could I have been so naïve?" "I wasted so many years." That version of me was making decisions with the wisdom I had at the time. She didn't know what you know now. She hadn't walked through the storms you have now survived. She had never seen the ending while she was still living in the middle. She wasn't weak. She was simply living in the story.  Sometimes I imagine all the versions of myself standing together. The little girl collecting seashells. The teenager convinced young love meant forever. The woman crying on the bathroom floor wondering if life would ever feel light again. The one who questioned everything she believed. The one who wandered. The one who finally began listening to herself. For a long time, I wanted to apologize to them. Now I simply want to hug them because every single one was doing her best to survive the chapter she had been given.

One of the greatest acts of healing is learning to forgive ourselves. Not because we were perfect, but because we were human. We cannot expect yesterday's version of ourselves to possess tomorrow's wisdom. That isn't how seasons work. Spring does not apologize for not yet becoming autumn. A seed does not apologize for not already being a tree. Winter does not apologize for looking empty while roots quietly prepare beneath frozen ground. Each season carries its own purpose, and so do we. There are seasons when we bloom. There are seasons when we break. Some seasons bring familiar things away. None of those seasons are mistakes. They are becoming.

People often ask when life finally settles down. I've begun to think it never truly does. Instead, we simply become better sailors. The waves still rise. The winds still change. The tides still carry us somewhere unexpected. We learn how to trust the sea beneath us. We learn that storms don't last forever. Most importantly, we stop believing calm waters are the only measure of a beautiful life. Some of our greatest transformations happen while the sky is still dark. The hardest forgiveness is not for ourselves. It is for those who became the catalysts of our transformation. It doesn't mean pretending the hurt never happened. It doesn't excuse betrayal. It doesn't erase cruelty. Forgiveness is not saying what happened was acceptable. It is saying that what happened will no longer decide who I become. 

There was a time when I wished certain people had never crossed my path. Today, I cannot honestly say that, because painful as those chapters were, they introduced me to myself. Had they stayed kind, I might never have discovered my own strength. Had they stayed, I might never have learned how to stand alone. Had every door remained open, I might never have found the one that was quietly waiting for me all along. Sometimes the people who hurt us become the unexpected architects of our freedom. Not because they intended to, but because pain has a remarkable way of introducing us to the parts of ourselves we never knew existed. For that, I have learned to whisper something I never thought I would say: Thank you, not for the hurt, but for becoming the chapter that led me toward the next one. We often imagine life as a straight road. Instead, it unfolds like the seasons. Spring never competes with summer. Autumn never mourns becoming winter. Each arrives exactly when it is needed. Our lives do the same. Innocence teaches us wonder; naivety teaches us trust; breaking teaches us resilience; awakening teaches us truth; and becoming teaches us that every previous version was never standing in our way. They were carrying us here. One season at a time.

Lately, I have been thinking about all the versions of ourselves we carry with us. The ones we keep apologizing for. The ones we wish we could rewrite. The ones we secretly hope no one remembers. Maybe we were never meant to erase them. Maybe every version of us was necessary. The one who made the wrong choice. The one who stayed too long. The one who fell apart. The one who didn't recognize her own worth. Even the one who wandered so far from herself that she wasn't sure she would ever find the way back. She was never your enemy. She was becoming. She was learning things you could only understand if you had lived them first. She carried you through a season you couldn't yet see the end of. Even when it looked as though she was lost, perhaps she was still walking you toward the person you were always meant to become. I think I understand that now more than I ever have before. Every version of myself was necessary; soon, I will tell you just how much.

If I could leave you with one thought, it would be this: Don't bury your former selves. Honor them. Thank them. Forgive them. Then open the gate and let them walk freely into the horizon. They no longer have to carry your guilt. They no longer have to relive your regrets. Their work is finished. Now it is your turn to keep walking. Not because you've left them behind, but because they walked every mile necessary to bring you here. That is what becoming has always meant. Not becoming someone new, but finally embracing every version of yourself with enough compassion to say, "Thank you for getting me this far. You can rest now. I'll carry us the rest of the way."

Every season leaves its fingerprints on us. Some arrive wrapped in sunlight, others beneath storm clouds, but each one quietly shapes the person we become. When we stop fighting our past and begin honoring it, we discover that none of our former selves were failures. They were faithful travelers, carrying us across landscapes we could not have crossed alone. That is the greatest freedom of all—to love every version of ourselves enough to finally let them go.

By Candlelight,

HN Staples

"The greatest act of healing is not becoming someone new, but forgiving every version of yourself that carried you here." — HN Staples