I thought I was reminiscing. Instead, I found nearly a decade of evidence that my life had been moving in a direction I couldn’t yet see.
There’s something different about reading your old words when you are no longer the woman who wrote them.
Today, I started going through old journal entries.
At first, I was simply reminiscing.
I wanted to see what I had been thinking around this same time in previous years. I journal so much that I have essentially created an archive of myself my fears, plans, prayers, frustrations, dreams, declarations, bad days, breakthroughs and all the little moments in between.
But somewhere in the middle of reading…
I stopped reminiscing.
I started recognizing.
There was a pattern.
And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
The Pattern Started Earlier Than I Realized
Initially, I was comparing April 2023, April 2024, April 2025 and where I am now in April 2026.
But then I realized:
Wait.
This didn’t begin in 2023.
I had to go farther back.
April 2017.
That was the month my ex-husband and I sold the home we had built together eight years earlier.
That house represented an entire version of my life.
Marriage.
Home.
Stability.
Identity.
The future I once thought I understood.
When we sold it, we physically separated. By September of that same year, we were divorced.
At the time, it looked like an ending.
Looking at it now?
It looks like the opening scene.
Because after that came movement.
2018: Tampa.
A new city.
A new chapter.
A life I was learning to construct independently.
Then:
2019: Seattle.
That was a much bigger leap.
Across the country.
Far away from everything familiar.
A version of me emerged there that needed to learn independence on an entirely different scale.
Then came:
2023: Pasadena.
California had represented something to me for years.
Expansion.
Possibility.
A new life.
But getting there wasn’t graceful.
My journal from April 27, 2023, reads like someone trying to extinguish five fires simultaneously.
The moving estimate had climbed above $14,000.
My relocation cap wasn’t enough.
I unexpectedly learned I had to pay to ship my car.
The apartment approval was delayed.
I was trying to remove furniture from the move to reduce costs.
I was asking a friend for financial help something I hated doing.
I wrote:
“I’m so tired and overwhelmed.”
And then, in the middle of all that chaos, I wrote something else:
“I know this is all happening for me, not to me.”
That stopped me.
Because even then…
some part of me knew.
The Woman Who Refused to Turn Around
The following day, I wrote that I had gotten physically sick.
I had been overwhelmed by the move.
The house sale.
The apartment.
The money.
Everything.
And for a moment, I considered staying in Seattle.
Maybe I could find another job.
Maybe I could keep the house.
Maybe I could stop all this madness and remain where I already knew how to survive.
Then I wrote:
“I have come too far to give up.”
And even more interesting:
“It would stall my rebirth and new life in California.”
Rebirth.
I was using that word in 2023.
Long before Soul Wealth Rebirth™ existed.
Long before the Chronicles.
Long before the podcast.
Long before I understood that becoming would eventually become part of the language of my life’s work.
The words were already there.
I simply didn’t yet know what they were becoming.
April 2024: Surrender Started Replacing Panic
A year later, I was preparing to move again.
This time, Phoenix.
I had an occupational health examination.
An apartment search.
Flights.
Dog sitters.
Work.
The usual Natalie-level logistics. 😂
But when I read those journal entries, I noticed something.
The tone had changed.
I still overthought.
I was still planning.
I was still trying to know every possible variable before it happened.
But there was more surrender.
I wrote:
“I’m just putting all of this in God’s hands.”
And:
“I know I will be fine.”
That woman was still nervous.
But she trusted more.
That matters.
Because growth doesn’t always look like suddenly becoming fearless.
Sometimes growth is simply:
Same uncertainty. Different response.
April 2025: The External World Was Quiet, But I Wasn’t
Then I got to April 2025.
This was after another move.
Another reinvention.
Another version of life.
And I wrote:
“I honestly don’t want to be at work today, but I’m here.”
Well…
some things are remarkably consistent. 😂
But what followed was essentially a manifesto.
I wanted movement.
Movement toward wealth.
Health.
Peace.
Ease.
Fulfillment.
Love.
Harmony.
Joy.
Travel.
Autonomy.
Happiness.
I wasn’t merely asking for a different job.
I was describing an entirely different life architecture.
Then, the next morning, I had an emotional crash.
I wrote:
“I’m tired of the stagnancy and not having fun.”
And then:
“I don’t know what fun looks like.”
That sentence hits me differently now.
Because I can see exactly where I was.
I had become very good at surviving.
Very good at achieving.
Very good at responsibility.
Very good at rebuilding.
But somewhere in the process, I had lost familiarity with something simple:
enjoying my life.
I wasn’t lost.
I was in-between identities.
And Now: April 2026
This year feels different.
Not because everything externally has suddenly resolved itself.
It hasn’t.
There are still pieces of my life that I know are changing but haven’t changed yet.
There are still things I’m waiting to see.
There are still moments when my patience runs thin.
But I’m doing something now that I wasn’t doing in quite the same way before.
I’m watching myself while I become.
I’m recognizing patterns in real time.
I’m noticing what I no longer tolerate.
I’m noticing how quickly I recover from frustration.
I’m noticing what no longer deserves my attention.
I’m noticing how often something that once would have consumed me now receives a simple:
No.
And then I move on.
That is what changed.
Maybe My Life Wasn’t Random
When you’re living through separate chapters, they feel separate.
Orlando.
Tampa.
Seattle.
Pasadena.
Phoenix.
Charleston.
Marriage.
Divorce.
Career changes.
Moves.
Money.
Loss.
Rebuilding.
Rest.
Restlessness.
New dreams.
New identities.
But when I pulled back far enough, I could finally see the connecting thread.
What felt like repeated starting over…
wasn’t starting over at all.
I had been moving forward the entire time.
City by city.
Decision by decision.
Version by version.
And suddenly I understood something:
The pattern wasn’t hidden.
I just wasn’t yet the woman who could recognize it.
From Seeking Confirmation to Recognizing Evidence
I’ve spent years looking for meaning.
Through prayer.
Intuition.
Synchronicity.
Astrology.
Tarot.
Conversation.
Reflection.
And I still appreciate all of those things.
But something is changing.
I don’t need every outside source to tell me what I already know.
Because now I have something else:
my own evidence.
My journals.
My decisions.
My behavior.
My resilience.
My boundaries.
My recovery.
My life.
There are years of receipts showing me that I have repeatedly moved through uncertainty and found my way forward.
That doesn’t mean I always know what comes next.
It means I trust myself differently while I wait for it.
The Pattern Was Always There
Maybe that’s what maturity sometimes looks like.
Not knowing everything.
But knowing yourself.
Knowing what you’ve survived.
Knowing how you’ve moved before.
Knowing what your patterns reveal.
Knowing when something is ending.
Knowing when you’re becoming restless because your life has become too small for the person you now are.
And knowing that the next chapter doesn’t need to make perfect sense before you’re allowed to enter it.
The woman writing this today has something the woman from 2017 didn’t have.
Perspective.
And the woman from 2030 will probably look back at me and see things I still can’t see.
That’s humbling.
And strangely comforting.
Because it means I don’t have to understand the entire story today.
I only have to continue living it.
Soul Reflection
Go back and read something you wrote years ago.
Not to judge yourself.
Not to cringe at who you were.
Not to rewrite the story with the knowledge you have now.
Just read.
Look for the language you repeated.
The dreams that kept returning.
The places where you thought you were lost.
The moments when you chose to continue anyway.
You may discover that your life has been telling you its story for years.
You just needed enough distance to recognize the plot.
What felt like starting over again and again was actually me moving forward the entire time.
With grace,
Natalie
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