Younger You

That moment younger you becomes your role model

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the younger version of me who did things I’m now really proud of.

She openly came out on the UNC field hockey team and to her religious family before the either environments were welcoming, upending outdated cultures in the process.

She went and played professionally abroad while on the centralized national team back in 2020, when there wasn’t a precedent for that or a permission slip. But it would later help me to connect to vibrant hockey culture around the world, and perhaps help other athletes see that there are other ways to play and develop.

And she followed the quiet nudge to study yoga deeper which ended up becoming a passion and changing how I live and relate to high performance.

When I look back on those moments now, they feel significant. Defining, even. The kind of things that take courage. But the truth is, I wasn’t trying to be brave. I wasn’t trying to redefine anything, I was just living my life and doing what felt right and good for me, and the impact happened as a consequence of that.

That’s what I think happens when you live in connection with your heart, when you live in alignment to your values and authentically navigate your world. How you live becomes what makes the difference and impacts people.

Interestingly, the things I am most proud of, I never even sought out to accomplish.

I don’t think I understood, in the moment, that every time I chose to respond to life in a new way instead of just repeating what had always been done, I was doing something that took real skill, and real courage. In the moment I just felt something pulling me that was bigger than any doubts I may have had, and I followed it.

And although I am extremely proud of my younger self, I’ve been sitting with a feeling I can’t fully shake yet - what has shifted? Why can’t I find that effortlessness?

If I compare that younger version of me, instinctive, unguarded, moving from feeling without overthinking it, to how I’ve felt the last couple of years, there’s a disconnect I didn’t realize was happening. Decisions have gotten heavier and more complicated. The path that used to feel obvious has gone unclear. Values that have once guided me are being called into question. And although making the right decision has always weighed on me, where before I proceeded with confidence, now I walk on egg shells.

I wonder if it is the responsibility that comes with getting older? The accumulation of people watching? Of a reputation and a version of myself that exists in other people’s minds and that I feel, sometimes, obligated to maintain? I don’t know.

Is it the pressure to live in a way that’s expected, because If I don’t and it all goes wrong, I am the only one to blame? Am I scared of the “I told you so” so I feel obligated to make the explainable choice, the one that fits the narrative people have? I don’t know.

What I know is that somewhere between that girl who just lived and who I am right now, something closed. Some channel that used to be open, between what I feel and what I do, got narrower, noisier and full of second-guessing.

Some people call this the dark night of the soul. Sounds dramatic, but when you are there, you’ll know it’s not.

It’s not depression or failure, but something more like dissolution, the place you find yourself in when the old answers stop working and the new ones haven’t come yet. The Unknown, or the “waiting room” I like to call it.

It does make me feel slightly better that mythologists, physiologists and religious leaders have mapped this concept, so I know I’m not alone. And the thing I’m holding onto is that it shows up in every hero’s journey at the moment just before something changes. I'm not saying that framing makes it easier to be inside it, in fact, it asks more of me. To decondition and outgrow patterns I've been loyal to for years, patterns that once kept me safe and now just keep me small. But it does make it feel less like something has gone wrong with me, and more like something I am meant to walk through.

And perhaps the feeling of no longer being that carefree girl isn’t true. And being adrift isn’t the opposite of that instinctive, creative, feeling-led nature, but actually exactly what I need to find this next version of me.

I’m writing this as I’m think aloud and without a resolution because at the moment I don’t have one.

What I do have though, are beautiful reminders from my past of what it looks like and feels like when I trust myself completely. When I’m not performing bravery for others, not trying to make an impact, not calculating whether the decision is the right one by someone else’s rubric but just responding to my life in a way that feels true to me.

I will hold close to that as I navigate the woods, because I don’t think I will find my way out using anyone else’s map but my own.

Safety

One thing I have realized the last few months in particular, is that in order for me to make creative aligned decisions in life, I need to feel safety, trust and openness in my body and mind. In other words, not acting out of trauma responses.

It’s not needing the safety of certainty, that fools gold. But the safety that comes from within, of being grounded enough in myself that I can walk through the unknown without desperately reaching for safety in places that aren’t meant for me.

I remind myself to be open enough to hear what I actually feel beneath all the noise, and trust I am capable enough to act in accordance on even the smallest of steps.

That younger version of me who came out, who got on a plane and went abroad without a map she wasn’t fearless. She was just, somehow, safe inside herself. Connected enough to her own instincts that she could follow them even when the path wasn’t clear. I think that’s what I’m finding my way back to. Not a set plan or certainty. Just that internal sense of safety, that I know I’ll be okay.