Dear Past Me, Look at Us Now: How Loss, Change, and Letting Go Helped Me Discover My Next Chapter in Life

If I could sit across from the woman I was one year ago, I’d start with this: You’re about to change. And it won’t feel good at first.

The year ahead will demand more from you than you think you have to give. You’ll lose your father. He was larger than life—not just to you, but to so many people. His death will ripple far and wide, magnified by the sheer volume of people reflecting on his life and his legacy. And yet, as the noise swirls, you’ll quietly mourn the man he was to you and the man he wasn’t. You’ll feel grief, yes, but also confusion, anger, and strange little pangs of love that surface when you least expect them.

Losing a parent is one thing. Losing him will feel like something else entirely. It will make you wonder who you are now that the person you were tethered to, even in a complicated way, is gone.

Then your daughter will get married. You’ll watch her step into this radiant new phase of her life, filled with joy and hope. And while your heart will swell with pride and happiness for her, you’ll also feel this sudden, undeniable shift. Somewhere in the midst of this year’s milestones, you’ll feel yourself moving up a generation, not just in title but in essence. You’ll no longer feel like the daughter or even just the mother. You’ll feel the weight of stepping into something else, something bigger and yet quieter.

It will hit you hardest over lunch one day with a young, hungry colleague, a woman brimming with the fire you once carried so easily. She’ll remind you of the version of yourself who stayed up late chasing a vision, who thrived on big ideas and bigger challenges. Watching her will feel like looking through a time machine, except this time, you’re on the outside.

And here’s the thing: It will sting. At first, you’ll mistake it for envy or, worse, inadequacy. You’ll wonder if you’ve lost your edge, if you’re stuck because you’re uninspired, or if maybe you’re not good enough anymore to chase greatness. You’ll tell yourself a dozen stories about why you don’t feel like the person you were five years ago.

But then—if you’re really paying attention—you’ll notice something else.

You’ll realize you don’t want to be her anymore. You don’t want to be the one grinding to build something from the ground up, fueled by ambition and an urgent need to prove something to yourself and the world. You’ll recognize that what you once craved with every fiber of your being no longer calls to you, and that this isn’t failure.

This is growth.

It will take time, but eventually, you’ll see that you haven’t lost your edge. You’ve sharpened it. You haven’t stalled, you’ve shifted. You’ve moved into a new phase of your life, one where the work is no longer about building something for yourself but about helping others build. You’ll see that you’ve become the mentor, the guide, the one with the scars of failure and the memories of success to pass on.

You’ll see that it’s not about giving up ambition. It’s about moving forward with purpose.

This year will demand a lot from you, but it will also give you something you didn’t even know you needed: permission to step into your next self. It’s not about aging or fading into the background. It’s about leveling up to become the person with experience, the one who’s learned that fire in your belly doesn’t always mean growth. Sometimes, growth comes in the quiet acceptance of where you are now and the realization that it’s exactly where you’re supposed to be.

So, dear past me, look at us now.

We’ve survived the grief of letting go of our father, of our old ambitions, of the roles we once played so naturally. We’ve embraced the joy of stepping into something new—not just for our daughter, but for ourselves. And we’ve learned that there’s power, even magic, in moving on.

This year didn’t just change us. It made us. And we’re better for it.

With love,

The future you.