Do you ever forget your first love?

The first time you rode a bike?

The first time someone held your hand and you knew there was a shift?

Do you still remember when you stopped being “old me” and became something new?

Bonus question: do you still bring the “old me” versions along with you in the car, to the coffee shop, into the shower and out with friends? Or are they discarded like the high school yearbooks you just had to have, or those trinkets you got on vacation because really, without them, who would even remember to remember going on vacation?

When I was little, my Grandma Millie – one of the greatest loves of my life – sewed me a blanket. It wasn’t anything special – no quilting or specialized knots or handywork. It was a simple Care Bears print with flannel backing. Pink. Soft. And irreplaceable. I would run that fabric through my fingers night and day, and as the years wore out the patterns and frayed the binding, I would still keep it safe. Always folded in half, Care Bears-side out. I had an uncontrollable impulse to breathe it in. Not just sniff. But a full covering of my mouth and nose and eyes and inhale, as if my lungs could not fully inflate without the infusion of dust from this fabric. When I married at the unripe age of 20, I had this blanket on my honeymoon. When I gave birth to my first son, my husband told me it was time to put it away. I was 28. It was a cruel trick of my husband’s to hide it or put it somewhere I couldn’t reach. The malignant desire to see me panic and squirm, having a full-body reaction to not being able to take a deep breath until in was wound through my fingers and pressed into my face.

I have no shame or embarrassment over this, despite efforts from many people in my suitor lineage and family line. Instead, I am sure there is a catalog of studies about why my attachment was just-so misplaced.

My trouble came when a second blanket appeared a few years after the first. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Reject that first one? Simply replace it? No. Blank 2, lovely as it was, sat neatly folded in the bottom of a baby doll’s cradle, the foot of the bed, or wrapped around the pile of stuffed animals. (Don’t even get me started on the emotional toll that having more than one stuffed animal had on my heart. The constant guilt of not dividing up my nightly cuddle time or possessing 18 different arms to give them equal access to my warmth. I mean, to spend the whole night in the dark, untouched and cold was too much for me to think about most nights.) I still shudder to think of what happened to them, and “Toy Story” did me zero favors.

And just like the two blanket crisis of my youth, I have maintained an unnatural – some say – and indescribable connection to the past versions of myself. I have held immense pride in being old-Shellies, even though, as I look back, I can see how unhealthy and un-whole most of them were. Incomplete vessels begging on emotional street corners to be noticed, fulfilled, loved and championed. Painting a sign, & preying on your sympathies in the hopes that you will drop a few coins of unconditional love into my Styrofoam cup. Learning the art of manipulation to survive. Dreamers and dancers waiting to be applauded and encouraged. Academic loaners with their Gold Stars pinned nice and straight onto their ironed-tight dresses. Sexy and giggling dessert platters ready for consumption, hoping to be savored instead of devoured. The one with all the answers and all the opinions, collected and distributed just to have a place at the table or in the conversation. They are all with me. The little ducks trailing after my now-41 year old self. Ablaze, branded, alight and shadowed Shellies who are now along for the ride and excited to see how it all ends up.

She is more solid, and more aware of the path that came before. The people-pleasing and achievement-chasing that kept me liking the reflection and striving for more and more has been hung up in the closet. This isn’t to say that the closet door is closed, or that sometimes, I don’t put one or more of them on to sniff deeply into my lungs – because returning back to home is sometimes the most toxically comforting thing you can do in a pinch – but I also refuse to say “I have grown out of that.”

I have grown out of nothing. I still have a crippling heat that rises from under my collarbone when I have to get dressed for a mixed-gender event. (residue: hyper-sexualization of the female form in the way my mother dressed and participated in the world). I still chase productivity, because without it, what am I worth? (residue: constant praise for being smart and pretty and well-behaved and oh-so-helpful). I still want my husband to flirt with me and reassure me that all other females are merely ghosts whom he never notices (residue: parental affair that split my family of origin). I still wonder if I am living an interesting enough life. (residue: Belle’s mirror made me think anyone anywhere could be watching and it is my job to give them something to talk about.). I still balance being too much or too little for any room I enter (residue: living as female in the world, just in general).

The difference is that with enough reflection, time, therapy with a kind and patient professional (shout out to Dr. Kathryn Christine), journaling, trial & error, and loads of forgiveness, I can keep all these versions of me in my closet without worry. They won’t spring to life and show up at the party, the job interview, my parent-teacher meetings, nor the lectern (in the latter, many come along for the first day of the semester still). I realized along the way that you don’t have disown, discard or disinherit any version of yourself you have outgrown. Be proud of them. They have carried you to the next version. And to the next. And to the next. Where you are right now, reading this, is a product of the work and the weight and the worry of every “you” you have outgrown.

There is enough shame roaming around to keep us coated in the pollution of self-doubt and negativity. Why add to it? Instead, loving those past versions, and, better yet, being grateful for who you got to be living as them, means blowing a fan of self-love to keep the pollution from seeping into your organs and shutting down your growth. What is this version of yourself teaching you today? What are you grieving but not yet ready to release? Where does the path end for this version so that the next one can begin?

And lastly, how is fear keeping you from putting those versions in the closet to grow anew?

This last one is where I keep finding myself journaling, talking, contemplating and dreaming.