The Grief of Becoming

There is a particular brand of grief people don’t talk about.

As a society, we are obsessed with becoming the better version of ourselves. The everyday athlete trains in a home gym, reshaping their physique. We re-write our biochemistry through peptides like tirzepatide and BPC-157, optimizing the brain’s control over appetite, even altering the body’s healing. Mental healthcare and wellness podcasts alike aim to change how we perceive ourselves, others, and our pain. And all of it can be shared, witnessed, appreciated.

But what about the changes no one sees but you? The subtle shifts away from someone you once were — not in how you look, but in your mental state, your spirit, your worldview. Stepping into a more authentic existence can put so much distance between your present and past that it feels like a different lifetime. The old people, habits, things feel foreign to you, yet still, ghostly, a part of you. Sometimes the people of your past are still there in your present, they are the same, you are not.

At times you feel like an apparition in their presence.

This grief can show up as a low-grade sadness, continuously humming in the background of life. The melody of your days that you barely notice until you catch a glimpse of that person you once were. Maybe it’s an old backpack from a certain era, a photograph, a gift from simpler times from someone dear who now can’t keep up with your life, so they still give you those simple gifts.

Or maybe it’s an inexplicable unease. You can’t quite lean into your soft girl era because your nervous system is still stuck on things being hard. It’s a challenge to be okay, to have peace, because you’re not quite sure if it’s real enough to trust. But you want to.

Something that took me a while to realize about this brand of grief is that it’s not a sign of something being wrong. It’s the cost of Becoming, the receipt for doing something worth doing. You only feel this particular ache because you actually moved through something big. The distance between who you were and who you are had to get wide enough to grieve — and that width is the whole point. That width is growth. If you felt nothing looking at the old backpack, it would mean you were still standing in the same place you bought it.

So the sadness humming under your days is not evidence of loss, exactly. It’s evidence of motion. Proof of life, in the most literal sense — that you are a thing still becoming, and not a thing already finished.

This is the part that makes the grief survivable: what is meant for you stays.

The people, the habits, the things that belong in your life don’t get left behind by your Becoming — they move with you through the seasons, or they find their way back, drawn in by the same authenticity that created the distance in the first place. Becoming more yourself doesn’t cost you what’s real. It just clarifies. It shows you what was always going to make the journey with you, and what was only ever yours for one particular era.

Grief is the feeling of a Living.