DEAREST CURIOUS READER,

Your correspondence has found its way to me, and I simply could not leave such a matter unanswered:

“I saw your post yesterday and it hit hard. I too am looking forward to getting my spark back. I just wanted to ask, what have you done? I know everybody is different. I have tried many things.”

And so, dear reader, let us get into it.

I wish I could tell you there was one thing I did to get my spark back. That there was a morning when I woke up and decided I had been sad long enough, prayed a little harder, started taking better care of myself, and somewhere along the way the woman I remembered simply returned.

But that would make for a much prettier story than the one I actually lived.

The truth is, getting my spark back has taken years. And perhaps the most important part of my story is that I didn't begin by trying to get myself back at all. I began by allowing myself to grieve.

For the first year, I stopped pretending I was okay. I allowed myself to openly go through what I was going through instead of trying to package my pain into something more comfortable for everyone around me. I told the people in my life that I was dealing with a lot emotionally and that I didn't have the capacity to support everyone else the way I normally had.

Eventually, I sat down with both sides of our family and told them what had happened. I stopped carrying the burden of trying to protect everyone else from the truth while I was barely holding myself together.

Something changed when I did that. Saying everything out loud meant that the people who loved me finally knew how much I needed them. They could support me. They could check on me. Most importantly, they could pray for me when I didn't always have the words to pray for myself.

I think sometimes we become so accustomed to being the strong one that we forget strength can also look like allowing other people to carry us for a while.

The second year looked very different. I began closing doors to the things I could no longer give my energy to. I stopped expecting myself to maintain every responsibility, relationship and version of my life while simultaneously trying to heal. I needed space to accept what had happened, but I also needed space to understand who I was after it happened.

For a long time, I thought healing meant eventually feeling like the old me again.

It didn't.

That woman had lived a life I no longer lived. She hadn't experienced the things I had experienced. I couldn't unknow what I knew or undo what had happened simply because I desperately wanted to feel familiar to myself again.

Eventually, I had to accept that I wasn't going back.

I was going to have to meet the woman I was becoming.

By the third year, I knew I needed to start moving my body again. There wasn't a dramatic goal attached to it. I wasn't chasing abs, a number on the scale or some huge transformation. I simply decided that I was going to commit to a fitness routine again.

So I moved. I worked out. I took photos. I weighed myself. I created ways to hold myself accountable even when I didn't particularly feel motivated to do any of it.

Looking back, I realize I was doing far more than rebuilding my body. I was rebuilding trust with myself.

Every time I said I was going to do something and followed through, I was keeping a promise to myself. After living through a season where so much of my life felt outside of my control, there was something incredibly powerful about realizing that I could still control how I showed up for me.

The following year, I started paying closer attention to my nutrition and to what was happening inside my body. Eventually, I sought additional support for the physical and hormonal changes I was experiencing rather than continuing to believe I should be able to exercise my way through everything.

For a long time, I thought that if I just trained harder, ate better or became disciplined enough, I could force my body back into the version I remembered.

But my body had lived through those years too.

That realization gave me a different kind of compassion for myself. Instead of constantly asking my body why it wasn't responding the way I wanted it to, I started asking what it needed from me.

And then something happened that I don't think we talk about enough when we talk about healing.

I had to give myself permission to be happy again.

There is a strange guilt that can come with happiness after you have spent a long time hurting. You almost become accustomed to carrying the heaviness. Then one day you laugh really hard, get excited about something, make plans for your future or catch yourself genuinely enjoying your life, and it can feel unfamiliar.

I had to decide that I was allowed to enjoy my life again.

I was allowed to laugh. I was allowed to travel. I was allowed to dream. I was allowed to want things. I was allowed to be excited about what might happen next. I was even allowed to become a version of myself that other people might not completely understand.

That was also when I committed myself to a new fitness goal.

Running.

And eventually, running a full marathon.

The funny thing is that a marathon was something I had said for years I would never do. But after everything I had been through, I needed something that made me curious about myself again. I needed a mission that had absolutely nothing to do with what had happened to me.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn't moving my body because I was trying to fix myself.

I was moving because I wanted to discover what else I was capable of.

And somewhere in all of that, my spark started showing up again.

Not all at once. Not with some grand entrance. It appeared in little moments. It was in my laughter. It was in the ridiculous goals I started setting. It was in wanting to travel again. It was in taking care of my body. It was in caring about what I wore. It was in dreaming about my future. It was in doing things simply because they brought me joy.

And, of course, there were a whole lot of prayers along the way.

I prayed. I journaled. I cried. I questioned. I asked GOD to show me what I was supposed to do next when I genuinely had no idea.

But I also learned something important about prayer during those years.

I couldn't pray for a different life while continuing to live exactly the same one.

There had to be action.

Sometimes the action was telling the truth. Sometimes it was closing a door. Sometimes it was resting. Sometimes it was getting my ass up and moving my body when I didn't feel like it. Sometimes it was asking for help. Sometimes it was changing the way I ate or trained. Sometimes it was forgiving. Sometimes it was allowing myself to enjoy something without feeling guilty about it.

There was prayer, and then there was action.

Again and again and again.

Until eventually, I realized I wasn't searching quite so desperately for my spark anymore.

I was living.

And that is why, dear reader, I don't know that I believe we actually find ourselves again.

I think we create ourselves again.

The woman I was before everything happened isn't the woman writing this letter to you today. I don't think I would want her to be. There are parts of her I miss, of course, but there are also parts of the woman I am now that could only have been built by surviving what I did.

So perhaps you don't need to keep searching for the woman you used to be either.

Maybe the reason you've tried so many things and still haven't found your spark is because you're looking behind you for something that is actually waiting ahead of you.

Instead of asking yourself, “How do I get the old me back?” I want you to try asking yourself something different.

“Who do I want to become from here?”

Then don't worry about changing your entire life tomorrow. Just ask yourself what that woman would do next.

Maybe she goes for the walk. Maybe she signs up for the class. Maybe she makes the appointment. Maybe she finally tells someone she isn't okay. Maybe she closes a door she has been afraid to close. Maybe she opens one. Maybe she goes back to church. Maybe she picks up the weights again. Maybe she books the trip. Maybe she asks for help.

Whatever it is, do one thing that moves you toward her.

Then tomorrow, do another.

Because I don't think your spark disappeared, dear reader.

I think you may simply be waiting to meet the version of you who carries it now.

Until our next correspondence,
Alex