Growth rarely leaves the past behind.
Field Notes
A tree doesn’t erase what came before it.
It grows around it.
The old fence remains. The trunk simply becomes large enough to hold it without stopping.
Perhaps we’re more like that than we realize.
We don’t outgrow our childhoods, mistakes, careers, relationships, or identities by making them disappear. They become part of us, quietly enclosed within each new season of growth.
The past doesn’t vanish.
It becomes part of the shape we continue growing into.