We’re not the same people we were when we first met. We’ve grown and changed in so many ways and reshaped ourselves into images closer to what we want to be and closer to the people we want to grow into. Compassionate, understanding, reasonable, patient. Not that we weren’t these things when we were younger, but there’s a maturity that has come with the path that we’ve navigated thus far. Between Edwin’s journey as he becomes a therapist and mental health provider, my journey with the legal field, our journey as a couple, our journeys as parents; we’ve had a lot of opportunities to grow.
Sometimes that growth leads to a better understanding of ourselves, and as we look back on others we think about the things we’ve done, the mistakes we’ve made, the people we’ve hurt in our lives before we obtained the growth that we have. As growth happens we find that we start being better able to process through difficult topics and have conversations that we may not have been able to have in a productive manner in the past. We’ve become more capable of having those difficult discussions, and we’ve started having those conversations, not just between ourselves, but with others from our past who we feel we need to make amends with.
We’ve had a lot of growing to do as a couple, especially as a multicultural couple. It’s taken a lot of learning, a lot of mistakes, a lot of hurt, to get to where we are today. I’m proud of us. I’m proud of how we’ve come to be more capable in our navigation of issues, the big ones and the every day ones. We’re still learning, still growing, and I look forward to growing and learning more with this amazing man in the future.
We are not perfect, and we do not expect perfection, but we do want to learn to be our best selves, for ourselves, for each other, for everyone else we encounter in our lives.