This is a post about learning to love all of the versions of myself that have existed over the past ten years (and beyond).

I look at these photos and I see two incredible women, two very different periods of my life. I have space and appreciation for them both.

The version of me in the left hand picture is 25 years old, just about to finish up her yoga teacher training. I’m living in Folsom, California, working full time as a project manager for a graphics printing company, commuting from Folsom to Sacramento. On Thursday and Friday evenings, I rush out the door from work at 5pm and sit in traffic on my way to the yoga studio, just barely making it there in time for our evening hours from 6pm to 10pm. I dream of days where I don’t have to commute so much. I wonder what it would be like to teach yoga full time.

This version of me is a little tired but mostly amped on how excited I am to finally be doing a yoga teacher training. It’s a dream I had for years and now it’s real. A few years prior, I had been accepted to a teacher training program in New York City with Dharma Mittra. I bought all the books. I wanted to go. And then I was in the middle of a divorce, and canceled my plan to go. The timing wasn’t right.

In 2010, I graduated from Northwestern University, after four of the most stressful years of my life. I got married the same year I graduated. Junior year of college was the first year I had a panic attack and a major depression; after getting burned out doing school full time and doing an internship down in Chicago, I spent a quarter away from my studies, home in California recovering. I wasn’t sure I’d graduate on time, but with just enough credits, I did.

I had started as a journalism major but finished as an English major, with a focus in creative writing and poetry. My college years were an incredible, challenging, rewarding, eye-opening time of life. A period that helped me grow and expand my perspective, broadening my horizons from having grown up in suburban northern California to now having lived in a huge Midwestern city.

Two years after graduating and getting married, I went through one of the hardest times of my life: a manic episode followed by an even deeper depression, and the divorce.

I felt like a failure when I moved back home to California and lived with my mom for 9 months. But by the time the first picture in this post was taken, I was on the other side of the worst of that time. I had moved into an apartment with my brother and his friend. I had a full-time job I liked (for the most part), I had gone to a music festival that summer and met a guy in north Lake Tahoe who I was seeing, and had a fun group of friends up there. I’d drive up on the weekends when I wasn’t in training.

I felt alive again for the first time in, gosh, four or five years? I felt like I had a future again, I wasn’t in the dark, hopeless place I’d been, and I was working toward a dream: to teach yoga, to share this practice with the world that had helped me so much over the last few years.

Part of me was terrified, but part of me was confident. Stepping into my own. Living life. Expressing myself, pursuing my dreams, actually enjoying the excitement of it.

That younger version of me on the left wanted to be cool, wanted to be loved, and was working her way towards loving herself.

Another image of the 25-year-old version of me, fresh in yoga teacher training. check out my arm… I was just starting to work on my tattoo sleeve at the time!

Me on the right, I’m 35. Recently remarried. Happier than I’ve ever been. Grounded. Calm. Relaxed.

I finally feel like the full version of myself, a woman who doesn’t depend constantly on outward approval from everyone around me. No longer someone who abandons herself for the sake of pleasing others.

I’ve hardly taught yoga over the past few years, but I still love what the practice has given me. Over the course of the ten years between graduating my 200-hour training and now, I’ve taught a lot. There were two short periods when I was teaching “full time,” focusing most of my time and energy on making an income through yoga and freelancing. Both times were a bit exhausting, and the pressure of making enough money took the fun and enjoyment out of my passion for yoga, so I took my career in a different direction.

I’ve taught in yoga studios in the Sacramento area, at a gym in Humboldt County when I lived in Eureka for a year, in Chico at gyms and studios and in the park. Since my move to Utah in 2021, I’ve taught at a gym, in the park a few times, online, and at a Himalayan salt cave.

My practice looks a lot different these days than it did when I was 25. I don’t do a lot of intense, fast-paced classes; the older I’ve gotten, the slower my practice is. I enjoy the spaciousness in taking slow, deep breaths rather than racing through the poses.

I love restorative as much as I love vinyasa. I do hot yoga in the winter and the snow and cold here are something I’m still not quite used to. The heat helps me relax.

I have a full-time job as a writer that I adore, and I freelance on the side for clients I love, too. I’m making more money than I ever have, feeling more stable and secure than ever, and proud of what I do. I feel confident in my creative pursuits, the projects I work on for myself and for the companies I work for.

Over these last ten years, my healing journey has led me through many transformative experiences. Many highs and lows. Many awakenings, new versions of myself, new layers being shed.

I left an abusive relationship.

I stopped drinking alcohol.

I’ve been a dog mom, and gotten clear about how I won’t be having kids.

I wrote and self-published 5 books and two journals.

I found out I had a bit of skin cancer, and had the surgery to remove it. Huge eye-opening experience for me!

I’ve traveled to places like Santa Cruz and Oregon to escape the wildfire smoke during California summers, to the desert in southern Utah and towns in between to visit a hot springs. I’ve visited South Dakota with a friend, Texas to see my sister and her family, North Carolina to hike with family, Maui to swim in the ocean with my husband. I dream about visiting Australia and western Europe in the next year or two.

I’ve started— and then quit— grad school, for the sake of my mental health. Quitting the MBA program I joined earlier this year was actually one of the most freeing experiences I’ve been through, and a true testament to how I’ve learned how to trust and care for myself. (More on that later.)

I’ve helped more than 50 authors edit and publish their books, which is a huge deal for me. I also ghostwrote a memoir, one of the coolest projects I’ve worked on.

I’ve been interviewed on two podcasts (you can listen here).

I met my husband, my person, and fell deeply in love. Together we have created the most nurturing, safe, loving home I’ve ever had.

There’s a lot more I could list, but these are a few incredible experiences over my last decade of life that come to mind.

I am unlearning a lot of the conditioning I grew up with: my good girl/people pleaser patterns, my peacemaker tendencies within my nuclear family, my old burnout pattern, my willingness to put up with abuse from narcissists I let into my life.

In the last two years especially, I’ve slowed down a lot. My daily habit of running that started in 2020 has gradually shifted into a walking and hiking practice. I enjoy the slower pace, how it gives me the freedom to look around and really notice what’s around me, to appreciate the small beauty and joy in nature, even nature scenes set within an urban landscape. I also love that I once had the resilience and mental toughness to complete an ultramarathon and several full marathons.

Every season I’ve been through, every new version of me, I found what I needed at the time to experience waves of healing. I’ve been through periods of expansion and of contraction, learning and experiencing new versions of myself. I’m learning to accept and love all of them, all versions of me.

Over the past ten years, I've come to understand myself better. To explore what it means to be me, what makes me happy, and how my lifestyle can support my own sense of peace.

I've learned to stop putting so many things on the calendar all the time, to give myself grace when I need to cancel plans and regroup my energy. I've learned that I do better when I'm living for today, this week, this month rather than placing any expectations on myself for how my five-year or ten-year plan "should" look.

I've learned about being an empath, a highly sensitive person, a Pisces, INFJ/ INTJ. The Kapha/Pitta constitution in Ayurveda. And more recently, I've learned about human design and what it means to be a Projector. How it makes so much sense knowing a work-from-home lifestyle supports my deep need for quiet time and balance. How important my Reiki practice has been for supporting my own energy. How one of my strengths is perceiving what lies beneath the surface, in the unspoken and overlooked. How I hold that space for people without even trying, and how I can nurture my gifts by recognizing the right moments to share my wisdom, and to wait patiently for those who are ready to receive my guidance. How I naturally tend toward connecting with people and also need deep rest in order to function at my best.

It’s hard to capture in a single blog post all of the changes and growth I’ve been through over the last ten years. It would be impossible to sum it all up here, or even in a full-length memoir. I hope to share more of these reflections in a series of essays I’ve been working on, a series that dives into my relationship with my body and my experiences of pain and healing.

I hope this post gives you a new glimpse of who I am and where I have been. I hope it reminds you that it’s okay to change, that it’s important to, and that you’re allowed to love all of the versions of yourself that you’ve experienced.

So often we judge our pasts with such harshness or we pity the old versions of who we used to be. What if we learned to integrate them? To love them? That’s the journey I’m on. It’s a continuous one, a healing journey of hope, love, forgiveness, confidence and renewal.

Wherever you are on your journey, I see you.

And when I look back, I see me.

All the many layered versions of me.

May we learn to love ourselves through all of the growth and change.

In gratitude,

Rachel

Then and now, 2013 and 2023.

I’m curious— how have things shifted for you in ten years time? What are you learning lately? What have you grown to accept and love about yourself over the last decade?

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