The Architecture of Becoming: How Our Past Builds Our Present
Every person and experience that has shaped you—the beautiful and the difficult—has contributed to who you are meant to be
Life has a way of orchestrating moments that send us back in time—not always through crisis or celebration, but through the quiet recognition of how far we've traveled and who has traveled with us along the way.
Recently, a series of experiences pulled me back into the landscape of my past, each one revealing another layer of how I have become who I am meant to be.
When Memory Becomes Mirror
First came the memorial service for my childhood friend's father—a man who lived ninety-five full years before taking his leave. Standing in that sacred space, I found myself face to face with my dearest friend from across the street, the girl who built snow forts and shared secrets with me five decades ago.
The house directly across the street from my childhood home? Still her family's house, after all these years.
We've been woven into each other's stories since we were toddlers—dancing together, riding bikes down streets that still hold our laughter, and creating elaborate kingdoms in the snow. We harmonized in our high school singing group, whispered about boys and dreams and all the infinite possibilities that stretched before us.
Then life did what life does—it scattered us across continents and decades. Over thirty years passed without seeing each other, though she remained safely tucked in the corner of my heart where childhood friends live forever, unchanging and eternal.
But 2020 brought us both home. The pandemic called us back to be present with our aging parents in ways we suddenly understood we needed to be. And there we were—neighbors again on the same street where we once believed summer would last forever.
Now, whenever I am back at home in Connecticut, we walk together in the early mornings when the world is still quiet and honest, around the neighborhood that holds our history. We talk about children and love, about our professional paths and life's unexpected turns. About what it means to inhabit this strange, beautiful space between the dreams we once carried and the wisdom we're still gathering.
Her father was the first of our parents to go, and something shifts when we lose the generation above us—suddenly we're the adults in the room in ways that feel both inevitable and impossible.
The Constellation of Connection
The week continued to unfold like pages in a photo album I'd forgotten I owned.
An afternoon with my mother's best friend and her daughter—women who've known me since I was small enough to need a booster seat at the dinner table. We sat on the porch surrounded by her extraordinary garden, sharing stories of ski vacations and family traditions, marveling at how we've both found later-in-life love after navigating the turbulent waters of divorce and reinvention.
Then dinner with a dear friend making one of the boldest moves I've witnessed—relocating to Mexico to build a simpler, more authentic life as he transitions toward retirement. My beloved spiritual, gay friend is creating the accepting community he's always deserved. For the past few decades, we've loved and supported each other through divorces, countless happy hours, adventures, and so much laughter that my cheeks still hurt thinking about it. This chapter is coming to an end while another is just beginning.
Finally, my 40th high school reunion. Forty years. Nearly half a century of shared becoming.
I've attended every reunion over these years because so many of my closest friends emerged from those formative years when we were all figuring out who we might become. As a class, we've witnessed each other's evolution through decades of triumph and tragedy, success and struggle. We've seen the best and worst of ourselves, accepting the beautiful imperfections that come with truly knowing someone's full story. High school was inspiring and empowering for me; seeing so many of my childhood friends filled me with joy.
The Alchemy of Experience
All of these encounters stirred something profound in me—a recognition of the intricate architecture that builds a life, and the countless hands that help shape who we become.
Every person who has crossed our path, every experience we've lived through—whether by choice or by chance, whether joyful or devastating—has contributed something essential to our becoming. The childhood friend who taught us loyalty. The mentor who believed in us before we believed in ourselves. The heartbreak that cracked us open enough to let more light in. The failure that redirected us toward our true path.
Even the difficult people and painful experiences serve as unwitting architects of our character. They teach us resilience, discernment, and the fierce protection of our own truth. They show us what we will and won't accept, what we value most when everything else falls away.
The profound truth is this: we are not self-made. We are collectively crafted by every soul who has shared space in our story, every moment that has asked us to choose who we want to be.
The Grace of Recognition
There's something sacred about reaching midlife and being able to look back with both gratitude and clarity. To see how the girl who was afraid to speak up in meetings became the woman who now facilitates boardroom transformations. To understand how the heartbreak that nearly broke us also broke us open to deeper love. To recognize that every detour was actually leading us exactly where we needed to go.
This isn't about toxic positivity or pretending that painful experiences are "blessings in disguise." Some experiences are simply hard, and that hardness matters. But within that difficulty, something is also being forged—resilience, compassion, wisdom, strength we didn't know we possessed.
We become who we are meant to be not despite our experiences, but because of them.
Every joy expands our capacity for celebration. Every loss deepens our ability to hold space for others in their grief. Every challenge reveals resources we never knew we had.
Questions for Your Own Architecture
As you consider the constellation of people and experiences that have shaped your becoming, ask yourself:
Who were the unexpected teachers? Sometimes our greatest growth comes from people we never expected to learn from—including those who challenged or frustrated us.
What experiences do you now see differently? How have events that once felt like setbacks or mistakes revealed themselves as redirections toward your authentic path?
Where do you see your younger self's dreams reflected in who you are now? Even when life takes us in directions we never planned, often the core essence of what we desired remains, just expressed differently.
What patterns of resilience can you identify in your story? How have you repeatedly shown up for yourself and others, even when it was difficult?
Tools for Honoring Your Journey
Create a Gratitude Map: Draw or write out the significant people and experiences that have shaped you, including the difficult ones. Notice how even challenges contributed something valuable—perhaps strength, wisdom, or clarity about what matters most.
Write Letters You'll Never Send: To the people who hurt you, helped you, or changed you. Express what you learned, what you're grateful for, or what you needed to say. This isn't about forgiveness or reconciliation—it's about recognizing the role everyone played in your becoming.
Practice the Long View: When facing current challenges, ask yourself: "How might this experience be contributing to who I'm becoming?" Not to minimize difficulty, but to trust in your own capacity for growth and transformation.
The truth is, we are all walking miracles—complex beings shaped by love and loss, triumph and failure, intention and accident. Every thread in the tapestry matters. Every person who has touched our lives has left something behind, even if we can't see it yet.
Your story is still being written, still being shaped by every person you meet and every experience you encounter. The architecture of who you are becoming continues to rise, built on the foundation of everything that has come before.
And that, perhaps, is the most beautiful recognition of all—that we are not finished products, but works of art in progress, shaped by the magnificent, messy, miraculous business of being human.
What will you create with all that has shaped you?
