Letters from the In-Between: I Know You Keep Asking Why
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Sometimes the answers don't change your past. They change the way you carry it.
For years I searched for reasons why,
beneath each wound, beneath each sky.
Believing if I solved the pain,
my heart would finally rest again.
But life was never asking me
to change the past that came to be.
Only to soften how I see,
and set the younger version free.
Some answers don't erase the ache.
They simply help your spirit wake.
And when the story starts anew,
the one who changes... first is you.
I know you keep asking why.
Why this family? Why did you have to grow up feeling so alone? Why did you always feel like you were swimming against the current while everyone else seemed to know exactly where they belonged? Why did your life have to begin this way?
I know those questions because I carried them for years. I believed that if I could just find the right answer, everything would finally make sense.
A few days ago, I decided to ask those questions one last time. Not to another book, another teacher, or another therapist. I asked my soul.
I asked
“Why would I choose to be born into a family marked by alcoholism?”
She answered with a tenderness I had never offered myself.
“Because someone had to become the one who ended the cycle instead of continuing it. You came to discover that love doesn’t have to hurt, and one day the people you love would inherit that discovery instead of the pain.”
Then I asked her why you had grown up feeling so alone. Why your mother hadn’t been able to be there in the way your heart had needed.
She said,
“The love you didn’t receive became the love you would spend your life learning to give. Your loneliness was never proof that you weren’t lovable. It became the place where your compassion was born.”
There was one more question you had been carrying almost your entire life.
“Why have I always felt like I don’t belong?”
She smiled before answering.
“Because you didn’t come here to fit in. You came here to learn how to think for yourself. Belonging was never going to come from becoming more like everyone else. It would come from becoming more like yourself.”
And for the first time, I understood something I wish you could know today.
True belonging isn’t about finding a place where everyone accepts you. It’s about having the courage to be fully yourself, even if it means standing alone. Because you can’t truly belong anywhere until you first belong to yourself.
None of those answers changed our childhood. They didn’t erase the loneliness or rewrite the past. But they changed something just as important. They changed the way I carry our story.
Before ending the conversation, I asked the question you’ve been asking in a hundred different ways for as long as I can remember.
“What lesson am I still missing before the life I’ve always dreamed of finally arrives?”
She smiled.
“You’ve spent your whole life believing that life is waiting for you to graduate before it lets you receive.”
That sentence stayed with me because I suddenly realized that it wasn’t just how I approached healing. It was how I approached life itself.
For years, I believed the order was simple. First, I would have everything I wanted. Then I would finally do all the things I dreamed of. And only then would I become the woman I wanted to be.
But somewhere along the way, life quietly taught me that I had the order completely backwards.
It has always been...
Be. Do. Have.
And I wish you could see us now. Not because we have everything we once dreamed of. We don’t. There are still dreams I hope will unfold. There are still experiences I long to have, projects I want to create, and goals I’m excited to pursue.
But those dreams no longer define whether my life is enough. Because something much more important has already happened.
I already became the woman we were trying so hard to become.
I no longer wake up wishing I were someone else. I wake up excited to do work that feels meaningful. I move through life with more peace than fear. I trust myself in ways you can’t imagine yet. I have learned to enjoy ordinary days instead of constantly waiting for extraordinary ones.
The most surprising part is that happiness didn’t arrive when life became perfect. It arrived when I stopped believing that my peace depended on everything I still wanted to have.
I still want those things. I still work toward them. I still believe they will come. But they no longer get to decide whether my life feels full and worthy. They no longer define my worth. They no longer determine whether I am enough.
If I could tell you only one thing, it would be this: Please stop postponing your life until you become someone else. You are already becoming her. And one day you’ll realize that she was never waiting for a different life.
She was simply waiting to come home to herself.
Love,
Your future self
What I know now
Sometimes the most important answer isn’t why something happened. It’s who this experience is inviting you to become.
True belonging begins the moment you stop trying to become someone else and allow yourself to be who you are.
Become who you want to be, do what you want to do and what makes you happy and then get the things you want - this is the correct order to feel plentiful and free, otherwise no matter how many things you have, you will always feel like something is missing.
Carry this with you
Keep asking the questions that matter. Just remember that not every answer arrives in words, and not every answer arrives when you ask. Some answers can only be understood by the person you're becoming.
Before you go…
What question have you been asking for years... that might become more meaningful if you asked it differently?
I’d love to read you in the comments.
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