Born Today?
A reading for your birthday. Leo season.
Each substance of grief hath twenty shadows, which shows like grief itself, but is not so; or sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears, divides one thing entire to many objects: like perspectives which, rightly gaz'd upon, show nothing but confusion:
William Shakespeare, Richard II
The person you were two years ago is still talking, and you can hear her clearly enough to know she would not recognize the decisions you are making now. She had different priorities and different fears, and she solved problems in ways that feel foreign to who you have become. What makes this strange is not that you changed, but that you can remember so precisely what it felt like to be her, and you can see exactly where the two of you part company. The year ahead asks you to stop carrying her voice as a second opinion on choices she was never equipped to make. This does not mean dismissing what she knew, but it does mean accepting that some kinds of knowing expire, and what you owe her now is not consultation but recognition for the distance traveled.