Sometimes you have to meet your former selves again before you can understand who you’ve become.
That’s what happened when I started reading my old journal entries.
I wasn’t originally trying to conduct some grand analysis of my life.
I was simply curious.
What was I doing around this same time in previous years?
And then I found April 2023.
April 2024.
April 2025.
And now...
April 2026.
Four Aprils.
Four versions of me.
And suddenly...
I could see the pattern.
April 2023
I was preparing for California.
Looking for an apartment in Pasadena.
Trying to create a completely different life.
I was excited.
Anxious.
Hopeful.
Scared.
I believed I was stepping into a rebirth.
And even while things were going wrong—housing complications, financial worries, uncertainty, I refused to believe the story ended there.
I wrote about faith.
I wrote about starting over.
I wrote about creating a new life.
And around that same time...
I recorded the first episodes of a podcast I would never publish.
The Lush Life of Natalie.
I didn’t know it then...
but I was already trying to find my voice.
April 2024
Another transition.
Another move.
This time, Phoenix.
I was researching apartments.
Getting moving estimates.
Navigating job transfer logistics.
Trying to figure out how to move myself, my dogs, my furniture, and my entire life again.
My journal was full of anxiety.
But beneath the anxiety was certainty.
I was going.
I just didn’t know exactly how everything would work.
Once again...
I was between lives.
April 2025
This April felt different.
I wasn’t preparing for another move.
I was tired.
Bored.
Restless.
I wrote:
“When is it going to click?”
I questioned why I kept trying things that eventually stopped feeling right.
I was frustrated with work.
Frustrated with business.
Frustrated with the feeling that I had invested so much into becoming someone...
without seeing the return.
And then I wrote something else:
“I’m ready to upgrade.”
At the time, I thought I was waiting for life to change.
Looking back...
I was changing.
April 2026
And now here I am.
Another April.
But something is different.
I’m not packing boxes.
I’m not frantically searching for an apartment.
I’m not trying to rescue myself from financial instability.
I’m not asking whether my life will change.
I’m asking when I’ll see the external evidence of a transformation I already know has happened internally.
That’s an entirely different question.
And reading those journals helped me understand why.
I wasn’t going in circles.
I was moving through stages.
Every April wasn’t the same story repeating itself.
It was another layer.
In 2023...
I was searching for reinvention.
In 2024...
I was still using movement to create change.
In 2025...
movement stopped working as the answer.
And in 2026...
I finally understand why.
The destination was never simply another city.
Another job.
Another business.
Another relationship.
Another version of the external world.
I was trying to reach myself.
And perhaps that’s why looking backward feels so different now.
I don’t want to return to those versions of me.
But I understand them.
I can see what each woman was trying to accomplish.
I can see what she knew.
I can see what she couldn’t know yet.
And most importantly...
I can see how every version led here.
Maybe that’s why certain dates, seasons, and anniversaries call our attention back.
Not because we’re supposed to live in the past.
But because sometimes the past holds the evidence we need to understand the present.
I thought I was revisiting old journal entries.
Instead...
I met the women who built me.
And finally...
I could see the pattern.
With grace,
Natalie
© 2026 Soul Wealth Rebirth™
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