The Space Between Who You Were and Who You’re Becoming

Years ago I started diving into self work.

I craved growth.

Change.

Confidence.

Stability in the character I was becoming.

Yet whenever I’d show up somewhere I hadn’t been in a while…

or around people I hadn’t seen for months…

Something interesting kept happening.

They didn’t greet me as if I’d changed.

They greeted me as if I’d been the same person all along.

It was as if nothing had changed.

I found myself trying to steer conversations away from who we used to be, and toward who we were becoming.

Usually without much success.

The panic would rise.

I’d feel myself slipping back into old habits.

The same habits I’d worked so hard to leave behind.

I’d leave those spaces feeling unsettled.

Like I’d failed to show up as the person I was trying to become.

For a long time, I thought that meant I wasn’t changing.

I blamed myself.

I felt weak.

Ashamed.

Frustrated that old environments seemed to pull old versions of me back to the surface so easily.

Eventually, I realized something.

The real problem wasn’t them.

It was that I had changed… and I had no idea how to be this new version of myself in familiar places.

I didn’t know how to have different conversations.

I didn’t know how to respond in different ways.

I didn’t know how to carry a new perspective into relationships that still expected the old one.

Everything looked the same.

But nothing felt the same.

For a while, I felt like I no longer belonged.

And if I didn’t belong there…

Where did I belong?

Looking back, I don’t think that season was asking me to become someone else.

It was asking me to practice being the person I was becoming.

To stumble.

To notice.

To choose again.

Changing within changes everything outside of you.

Not because the world suddenly becomes different – 

but because you do.

For a while, there is a space between who you’ve always been and who you’re becoming.

It can feel lonely.

It can feel confusing.

It can even make you question whether you’re moving in the right direction.

But maybe that uncomfortable middle isn’t evidence that you’re failing.

Maybe it’s evidence that you’re changing.

Reflection Questions

• Where are you expecting yourself to already be “finished”?
• What old environment still invites an old version of you?
• How have you changed, even if your surroundings haven’t?
• What would it look like to trust the person you’re becoming?

Watch the conversation that inspired the reflection here: