The last two weeks I’ve spent more time talking to my parents, aunt, uncle, and long-time family friends than I have in years. All the predictable excuses for that — and a few unusual ones — are to blame.
I’ve heard stories about my dad’s Army service at Fort Carson during Vietnam that I’d never heard before. I’ve heard stories about my grandparents no one ever mentioned, pieces of their lives that somehow never made it into the family narrative. Not because anyone was hiding them, necessarily, but because there’s only so much that ever gets told, and even less that gets remembered out loud.
I’ve started to connect dots I didn’t even know were there. Habits. Reactions. The way I handle stress, or avoid it. Things I always thought were just “me” now look a little more like inherited patterns — passed down quietly, without explanation or instruction. It’s been a little like opening a fully packed suitcase full of untold stories, unspoken feelings, complicated relationships, and messy family dynamics. Some of it is worth sitting with, turning over, understanding. And some of it makes me want to slam the suitcase shut, lock it, and pretend I never opened it in the first place.
But once it’s open, you can’t unsee what’s inside.
And it’s made me ask a question: do we ever really know anyone? Even our closest family members? We know the basics. We know the roles they’ve played in our lives. But do we ever really know them?
I’m starting to think the answer is no — at least not completely.
People aren’t static. They’re layered. Shaped by moments they don’t always share and decisions they don’t always explain, sometimes because they can’t, sometimes because they don’t fully understand them themselves. What we see is a version — sometimes curated, sometimes protective, sometimes incomplete even to the person living it. A parent is never just a parent. A spouse is never just a spouse. They were someone before us, alongside us, and in many ways, still apart from us.
And maybe the bigger realization is that the same thing is true when we turn that lens inward.
We tell ourselves stories, too. About why we react the way we do. About what we value. About what we fear. We build identities out of memory, habit and a handful of explanations that feel true enough to hold everything together. But every now and then, something disrupts that narrative. And suddenly, we’re left staring at a version of ourselves that feels both familiar and foreign.
Every new season of life is like walking through a portal into a different universe. There’s a before and an after, and you don’t always recognize yourself on the other side right away. It’s that first night in your first apartment, wondering what to do with the silence. It’s taking a new baby home from the hospital and realizing there’s no one else to hand them back to — this is your role now. It’s watching your child drive away with their newly minted license, a mix of pride and something that feels a lot like loss. It’s weddings and grand babies and the slow accumulation of years that show up all at once when you’re not looking.
And then there are the harder crossings. Losing people who have always been part of your landscape. Watching the roles shift in ways you weren’t quite ready for. Realizing you’re now the one doing the guiding instead of the one being guided — even when you still feel like you’re figuring it out as you go. The changing of the guard, whether you feel ready for it or not.
The first steps through any of these portals are always a little uncomfortable. Awkward. Even when they’re filled with joy, there’s a sense of disorientation — like the script has changed and no one handed you the new pages. You find yourself in a new role, wearing a new costume, trying to understand the part you’re supposed to play on the stage of life.
The scene and the storyline and the plot are always in flux, and we waste a lot of time resisting the accompanying changes. We’re not ready, we don’t know what we’re doing, we don’t want to accept what we’re seeing. We want certainty, completion, simplicity. And that’s not what life is.
Accept the uncertainty. The incomplete. The complicated. Embrace them. They’re all part of the tale.