There is a photograph of me setting up a booth filled with books I created.
I remember that version of me.
She was building something she believed in.
She had plans for where it might go. Ideas about what came next. Things she wanted badly enough to spend her time, energy and creativity making them real.
She wasn’t pretending.
She really wanted that life.
And then, eventually, I didn’t.
I think one of the strangest things about changing is looking back at something you once wanted desperately and realizing that you no longer want it in quite the same way.
For a long time, that unsettled me.
Because if I could change my mind about something that had once mattered so much, what did that say about all the choices I had made before?
Had I been wrong?
Had I wasted my time?
Had that earlier version of me simply not known herself well enough?
After that particular chapter of my work ended, I went through a period filled with realizations and questions I hadn’t expected to have.
Not because everything that came before had been a mistake.
It wasn’t.
I built things I was proud of. I learned. I created. I met people. I had experiences that became part of me. There are things from that chapter I will always value.
But I wasn’t exactly the same person on the other side of it.
And perhaps that was the part I needed to understand.
We make decisions with the person we are at the time.
With what we know.
With what we need.
With what we hope for.
With the future we can imagine from where we are standing.
Then life gives us more information.
Sometimes our circumstances change.
Sometimes a relationship changes.
Sometimes a dream stops feeling like home.
Sometimes we discover that a goal we spent years pursuing belonged to a version of ourselves we have quietly outgrown.
And sometimes there isn’t even a dramatic reason.
We simply change our minds.
I am learning that I don’t have to turn the first road into a mistake just because I choose another one.
Changing direction doesn’t automatically invalidate the person who chose it.
The woman in that photograph wasn’t foolish for wanting what she wanted.
She wasn’t wrong because I know things now that she didn’t know then.
I don’t need to diminish what she built in order to justify building something else.
She got me here.
But gratitude for my past does not require permanent loyalty to every decision I made in it.
I am allowed to change my plans.
I am allowed to outgrow a dream.
I am allowed to reconsider a relationship.
I am allowed to put down a goal that once consumed me.
I am allowed to discover that an identity I wore comfortably for years doesn’t fit anymore.
I am even allowed to change my mind about something I once desperately wanted.
There is a particular kind of freedom in realizing that changing my mind doesn’t require me to declare war on my past.
I can honor the woman who chose the first road.
I can be proud of what she built there.
I can even love parts of the life she created.
And still turn.
Maybe changing my mind isn’t evidence that I never knew what I wanted.
Maybe I simply know myself differently now.
And I am allowed to let that change where I go next.
—-
With elegance and quiet fire,
Lady E
Founder, Glow by Lady E
An editorial space for stories, art, and intentional living
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