The Book Didn't Change. I Did.

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to rewrite my second book, Becoming the Woman I Needed.

I had changed so much since writing it. My understanding of myself, my relationships, my spirituality, and the meaning I made of my experiences had evolved. I was in a different place. A lighter place. A place where joy felt less like something I was searching for and more like something I was finally allowing myself to experience.

And I wanted my book to reflect that.

But there was something else, too.

I think I was ashamed of it.

That's a difficult thing to admit about something I poured so much of myself into. Something I spent countless hours writing, revising, and eventually finding the courage to publish.

The book explores some deeply personal subjects. Feelings of not belonging. Meeting my wife. Divorce. Sexuality. Sex. The complicated experience of questioning a life you thought you understood.

Topics that people don't always talk about openly. Certainly not with the kind of vulnerability I put on those pages.

But the book was never really about those things.

It was about remembering who I was.

And remembering was messy.

It meant questioning things I'd believed about myself for decades. Looking at the expectations I'd carried, the roles I'd played, and the stories I'd accepted about who I was supposed to be.

It meant telling the truth, sometimes before I fully understood what that truth meant.

And then I did something rather extraordinary.

I wrote about it.

And published it.

And then, for the most part, I hid it.

I didn't promote the book. I didn't talk about it at all. I worried about how people would interpret my words, what they might think of me, and whether I'd revealed too much.

I had been brave enough to write the story, but perhaps not quite ready to let the world read it.

So when I found myself in a new season of life, I thought the answer was to rewrite it.

I wanted to soften some things. Reframe others. Bring more of my current understanding into the pages. Make the book sound more like the woman I am today. To be less heavy and to talk more about joy.

My publisher gently encouraged me not to.

She reminded me that the book was part of my journey. That it represented a particular time in my life. That I didn't need to change it simply because I had changed.

I understood what she was saying.

But I wasn't entirely convinced.

Until this week.

I picked up Becoming the Woman I Needed and read it again.

And something happened that I hadn't expected.

I was struck by my own bravery.

Not by the things I wished I'd said differently.

Not by the subjects that once made me uncomfortable.

Not by the messiness of the experiences I described.

By the courage it took to write about them.

I found myself reading passages and thinking, Wow. She was brave.

I was surprised by the grace with which I'd written about difficult things. By the tenderness I extended to complicated experiences. By the honesty of a woman who was trying to understand herself without pretending to have everything figured out.

I didn't cringe (well, maybe a few times).

I didn't want to hide.

I didn't feel the need to defend her.

I admired her.

And perhaps most surprisingly, I felt proud of her.

Seeing the Same Story Through Different Eyes

A few weeks ago, during a retreat, I climbed 120 steps in an exercise that invited me to revisit different years of my life.

At each step, I reflected on the woman I had been at that age. The experiences that shaped her. The things she understood and the things she couldn't possibly have known yet.

The invitation wasn't to change those experiences or to go back and retrieve something I'd lost.

It was to see them differently.

To revisit moments that once carried pain, confusion, or heaviness and recognize what else might have been present.

Strength. Courage. Love. Grace.

I could look at the woman I'd been with the perspective I have today. I could acknowledge her experiences without needing to relive them. I could respect her, love her, and continue climbing.

Rereading my book felt remarkably similar.

Only this time, instead of standing on a step, I was turning pages.

And there she was.

The woman who had dared to ask difficult questions. Who had written about subjects that many people would rather keep private. Who had been willing to share the messy, imperfect experience of remembering who she really was.

For so long, I'd looked at that woman through the lens of what I knew now. I saw the things I would do differently, the perspectives I'd outgrown, the parts of the story that no longer reflected my life.

But this time, I saw something else.

I saw her courage.

And I realized that I didn't need to change a single word to appreciate her.

The book hadn't changed. I had.

Maybe This Is What Growth Looks Like

I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about what it means to live more authentically.

To stop hiding parts of myself. To be curious without apology. To embrace my spirituality, my intuition, my intellect, my joy, and all the things that make me who I am.

To bring my whole self into the world.

And yet, here I was, still keeping an earlier version of myself tucked away on a bookshelf.

Not because she had done anything wrong.

But because I hadn't quite learned how to look at her without judgment.

I think we do this more often than we realize.

We revisit our past with all the wisdom we've accumulated since and wonder why we didn't know better. Why we made certain choices. Why we stayed. Why we left. Why we said what we said or believed what we believed.

We forget that the person we were was living that life for the first time.

She didn't have the benefit of everything we know today.

And sometimes, when we finally stop judging her, we discover that she was doing something rather remarkable.

She was finding her way.

I don't think growth always requires us to revisit our past and make peace with every detail. Sometimes it's much simpler than that.

Sometimes we just see things differently.

The experiences remain. The words remain. The story remains.

But the meaning we give them changes.

And with that change comes a kind of freedom.

Letting Her Story Stand

I wouldn't write Becoming the Woman I Needed the same way today.

I know that.

There are things I understand differently now. Things I might emphasize less, and others

I would explore more deeply. My relationship with myself has changed. My understanding of love has expanded. My faith and spirituality have grown. And I am finding joy in places I once might have overlooked.

But none of that makes the woman who wrote the book less worthy of being heard.

Quite the opposite.

She was brave enough to tell her story when she was still learning what it meant.

And she told it with grace.

I can see that now.

I can also see that remembering who we are isn't necessarily something we do once. Life keeps inviting us to look again, to understand more deeply, to discover parts of ourselves we hadn't yet given permission to emerge.

Maybe that's why this experience feels so connected to those 120 steps.

I don't have to stay on any one step.

I can pause. Look around. See the woman who stood there. Appreciate what she knew, what she carried, and how she loved.

And then I can keep climbing.

Not because I'm trying to get away from her.

But because I love her enough to keep living.

For a long time, I thought I needed to rewrite my book before I could feel proud of it.

Now I realize I didn't need a different story.

I needed a different perspective.

So I'm not rewriting Becoming the Woman I Needed.

I'm going to let it stand. I'm going to celebrate the woman who wrote it. And maybe, finally, I'm going to give it the opportunity to be read.

And there's one more thing.

When people ask how many books I've written, I usually say two.

Two.

As though the second one somehow doesn't count. As though the courage it took to write it was something I could quietly leave out of my story.

Well, not anymore.

I've written three books.

A trilogy, actually.

Each book tells a different part of my journey: learning to advocate for others, finding the courage to remember and reclaim who I really am, and discovering how our stories can bring us together across our differences.

I didn't set out to write a trilogy, but looking back, I can see the thread connecting all three: love, courage, and the lifelong work of understanding ourselves and one another.

Three books. Three chapters of a life I've had the privilege of living, questioning, and understanding in new ways.

And I'm proud of all three.

Especially the one I was once afraid to claim.

The book didn't change.

I did.