self portraits, in progress

tracing the soft and slow evolution of self

Still from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).

I’ve been thinking lately about the different versions of ourselves we become, love, abandon, mourn. The ones we try on like outfits and outgrow. The ones we thought we’d always be. The ones we never imagined becoming.

At any given time, we are walking self-portraits. Brushstrokes not yet dry, outlines still shifting, colors bleeding into one another. And thank God for that.

I used to think identity was about finding myself. Like there was one true version of me out there waiting to be uncovered. Some final, polished portrait I’d eventually land on, frame, and hang proudly. But that idea feels suffocating now. I don’t want to find myself like I’m a fixed point. I want to keep meeting myself…again and again….as I change.

When I was 24, I came back to the States after nearly two years of living abroad. It was a strange, floaty moment—exciting, disorienting, familiar, yet strange. I reconnected with a friend I’d been very close with before I left. We went out to dinner one night, and after a few drinks and what felt like a soft, heart-opening conversation, she looked at me and said, almost like a surprising accusation: “You’ve changed.”

She said it with a tone that wasn’t quite a compliment. It was more a gentle but confused observation, I think. She missed the version of me from two years earlier (which, honestly, I can understand). I remember feeling a swirl of emotions: embarrassed, a little ashamed, like I’d somehow failed to hold onto the version of myself she knew and loved. And yet, I also felt an inner insistence: of course I had changed.

In that moment, I had this strange impulse to shrink back into who I had been, just to keep her close.

I also knew, though, that the version of me sitting across from her that night was someone I really liked. Someone I had worked hard to become. Someone I had gotten to know with time, distance, and intention. And I wasn’t willing to un-become her, even for the sake of comfort or familiarity or a temporary moment of insecurity.

We’re meant to outgrow versions of ourselves. To leave some behind tenderly. To meet new parts of ourselves with awe. To revise. To start again.

Sometimes we change without even realizing it. You wake up and your favorite meal no longer tastes the same. The way you style your hair every day suddenly doesn’t feel like you. A friendship feels harder to return to. Other times, the changes are seismic. A breakup, a move, a loss, a new job, a diagnosis, a choice.

And then there are the quieter shifts. The ones we only notice when we look back. The fact that you no longer feel the need to explain yourself all the time. Or that you’re softer with yourself when you get something wrong. That your capacity to be alone has expanded, or that your sense of fun has evolved, or that you’ve stopped saying yes to things out of guilt.

The woman I am now at 29 is different from the woman I was at 24. She’ll be different from who I’ll be at 30, and 37, and 48, and 60. And none of those women are failures of the others. They’re chapters. Portraits mid-stroke.

There’s no shame in no longer being the person you once were. There’s no shame in not quite knowing who you are yet either. That’s the gift of being a person. We are ever-evolving. Self-portraits, in progress.

So here’s your reminder that you are allowed to shift. To become someone new. To go softer, bolder, stranger, brighter. To be unrecognizable to your past self in the best way.

What a joy it is to be unfinished.

xo,

liv

P.S. I watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire for the first time last week (hence, the metaphorical inspiration; and yes, I know I’m late). Excellent film. Highly recommend.