You change with life. And you’re not responsible for staying recognizable to everyone who knew you before.
There are people who have known me for years who probably wouldn't recognize my life now. Even though I’m not a completely different person, there are been so many version of me between then and now.
The girl who worked at that corporate office in Dallas.
The version of me who went to jewelry design school in New York.
The one you might remember from parties in New York City, or from one of the random jobs I took while trying to survive.
The woman who moved to LA and worked in the jewelry industry because I dreamed of having my own jewelry line someday.
The version who started Pursuit of Epicness with my best friend.
The one who quit her job, got in a car, and drove from LA to Atlanta to start over.
The woman who moved to Houston and started hosting a monthly game night with her husband.
The version who eventually decided she didn't want to live in America and spent years living in different places as a digital nomad.
These are all me.
Sometimes I look at the different chapters and think about how easy it would be for someone to look at all of it and decide I'm inconsistent.
But that doesn’t matter to me because I don't see it that way.
I haven't been inconsistent. I've just lived more than one chapter.
We are constantly being changed by our lives
Think about how many things can change you.
You read a book and suddenly you can't see something the way you used to.
You meet a woman selling bánh mì on the street and have a 5 minute conversation that stays with you for years.
You move to a new city and discover parts of yourself that never had room to breathe before.
You get laid off from a job and, after the initial shock wears off, realize you weren't supposed to stay there anyway.
You fall in love. You lose someone. You travel somewhere you've never been. You learn something you didn't know before.
You meet someone whose life makes you question what you thought was possible for yours. Then you change your mind.
All of these things give us new information.
Sometimes the change is obvious. But sometimes it's so gradual that you don't even notice until one day you realize you don't want what you used to want.
Tis life.
But we've been taught that we're supposed to stay in a lane, pick something and become known for it. So you build your whole identity around it.
That shit gets old.
Because how are we supposed to move through the world, experience new things, learn, grow, and encounter people who see life differently without being changed by any of it? Make it make sense….
At some point, the version people know may not be you anymore
I've had people know me through completely different chapters of my life.
If you met me in New York, you have a different reference point for me than someone who met me in LA.
If you knew me when I was building Elle Hamilton Jewelry, you may remember a version of me who was obsessed with making that work.
And if you met me when I started living abroad, you may have a completely different idea of who I am and what’s important to me.
None of those people are wrong.
They knew me then.
That's the part we can easily forget.
People build their understanding of us from the version they actually experienced. They don't get to see every thought, doubt, conversation, and realization that happens between the life chapters.
They may not know that something they remember as a defining part of your life has passed its season. And they have no clue what it took for you to sit with that decision before making it. And that's okay.
Their version of you doesn't have to be updated before you are allowed to keep living.
We don't have to stay the same to make other people comfortable
I think this is where a lot of us get stuck.
Maybe you’re ready to embrace that identity shift, but you’re not ready to make other people uncomfortable. They know you as the woman with a certain career or the one who has always lived in the same place.
And when you start wanting something else, there’s this unspoken pressure to explain yourself.
To make the change make sense or reassure people that you're still the person they know.
But what if I'm not?
What if the person you met 5, 10, or 15 years ago was real, and she's simply not here anymore?
I don't think we need to cling to a past edition of ourselves just to make someone else feel comfortable or happy.
At the end of the day, whether you are happy with the life you're living matters more than whether someone else prefers the version of you they remember.
It's your life.
Not theirs.
I've stopped needing every chapter to make sense to everyone
When I look at my own life, I can see the connections now that I couldn't always see while I was living it.
The different jobs, businesses, cities, and countries. All of the decisions that worked and the ones that didn't. And the times I changed my mind because I got what I wanted and then didn’t.
There have been moments, when I wondered if I should have picked a direction and stayed there.
But now I think the more interesting question is: What if I was supposed to keep discovering?
I've learned too much from every version of my life to wish I had stayed exactly the same.
The woman I was 10 years ago had information I don't have anymore. And I have information she couldn't possibly have had. So the change was inevitable.
We have to stop viewing it as inconsistency and start to see it as what happens when you let your life actually affect you.
So if someone remembers an older version of you, let them.
If they still think of you as the person you were when they met you, that's their memory. And that’s none of your business.
You don't have to keep performing a past version of yourself because she's familiar to someone else. You can appreciate who she was. Maybe even miss parts of her. But still leave her where she belongs…in the past.
We are not responsible for always being the person someone initially met.
Maybe she's gone.
