The Beauty of Becoming: Why We Need Every Version of Ourselves

“We grow by living, not by knowing.”

If I knew in my twenties what I know now, life would have been different. Easier, maybe. I would have recognized the wrong guys sooner. I would have handled difficult bosses with more clarity. I would have understood myself better in relationships.

But the irony, of course, is that without those exact missteps, I wouldn’t have learned what I now know. The wisdom I carry didn’t fall into my lap—it was shaped slowly, through experience, through the living of it.

And that’s what got me thinking about growth across a lifetime… how the person we’re becoming is always being shaped by the person we once were.

The Early Years: Wonder as Our First Teacher

Watching my kids move through the world reminds me of something adults tend to forget: we begin life rooted in curiosity.
Little ones don’t question whether they belong in the world—they explore it with open palms. Everything is discovery. Everything is new.

That sense of wonder is our first teacher, the beginning of every lesson life will eventually give shape to.

The Teen Years: Awkward, Uncertain, and Absolutely Necessary

Then come the teen years—the most uncomfortable growth spurt of all.
You’re half-child, half-adult, stretched between worlds. You’re trying on identities, shedding them, and trying again. You feel everything deeply, tenderly, and often too intensely.

But those years matter more than we realize.
They teach us about belonging, about desire, about disappointment.
They shape our confidence, our insecurities, our sense of self.
They teach us how to stand on our own feet—however shaky they may be.

These years aren’t pretty, but they’re profoundly formative.

The Twenties: Learning Through the Hard Way

In your twenties, life becomes a series of trial-and-error experiments.
You leap before you look. You get things wrong. You attach to the wrong people, chase the wrong things, and cling to the wrong dreams… until you finally learn to listen to yourself.

It’s the decade where we grow through friction.
Where self-trust is born through trial.

You can’t skip this stage. You can only live through it.

The Thirties: Building a Life While Learning Yourself

By the time your thirties arrive, life feels fuller.
Careers, relationships, marriage, motherhood—everything becomes more real and more demanding.

But this is also when you begin to understand yourself with more honesty.
You stop performing as much. You soften around the edges. You learn your preferences, your boundaries, your needs.

It’s the decade of self-clarity.
Our mistakes have matured into teachers.

The Forties: A Quiet Shift Into Wisdom

And then… something shifts when you hit forty.
No matter how much you try to resist the number, something inside you rearranges. You begin caring about your health—not for vanity, but for vitality. You want strength over thinness. Nourishment over restriction. Movement because it feels good, not because it earns anything.

And time itself changes meaning.
It becomes less about optimizing and more about savoring.
You start noticing the tiny things again—the way your kids laugh, the way sunlight moves through a room, the way breathing deeply can shift everything.

It feels like a return to yourself.

A Nature Metaphor: The Growth Rings We Carry

I often think of the inner rings of a tree.
Every ring represents a season—years of drought, years of abundance, years of quiet, years of rapid expansion.

We carry rings like that, too.
We grow deeper, wiser, and more rooted with each rotation.

Some seasons leave scars.
Others leave softness.
But all of them create who we are.

Looking Ahead: The Decades We Haven’t Lived Yet

And here’s something I’ve been thinking about:
We often talk about the decades behind us, but what about the ones still waiting for us?

The next decades will ask new things from us—different strength, different softness, different courage.
They may hold:

• The years our babies grow up and spread their wings

• The years we learn to mother in a quieter, more spacious way

• The years we step into being mentors, guides, maybe even grandmothers

• The years where our identity shifts again, not away from motherhood but into a new form of it

We’re not done becoming.
Not at forty. Not at fifty. Not at seventy.

Each decade ahead will require growth we haven’t yet imagined, and will offer joys we can’t yet see from where we stand today.

Motherhood evolves, and so do we.

Honoring Every Version of You

The next time you look back and wish you had done things differently, remember:
You couldn’t have known then what you know now.
You were becoming.
And you still are.

Honor who you were.
Honor who you are.
Honor who you are becoming.

Every version of you has brought you exactly here.