“You were always such a happy child.”

I‘m probably not the only one who‘s heard these words before — from parents, relatives, people who knew me when life still felt soft and uncomplicated.

But then I grew up. And I met the world.
Not the one built out of bedtime stories and safety — but the real one. The one where you have to figure out who you are, instead of trying to fit into who everyone thinks you’re supposed to be.

Somewhere along the way, I crossed boundaries.
I outgrew versions of myself that no longer fit.
I walked away from places and people who once felt like home.
I made choices my childhood self wouldn’t understand — some I‘m proud of, some I‘m still learning to recover from.
And yes, sometimes those choices cost me bridges I can never quite rebuild.
And somewhere along the way, that happy child inside me lost a bit of its glow — its softness, its innocence, its easy joy.

Maybe I fell in love and learned the ache of losing it.
Maybe I discovered that not everyone has good intentions.
Maybe I faced every lesson my parents once tried so hard to protect me from.
Maybe I learned that life doesn’t always go to plan — but sometimes that’s exactly what pushes me toward the person I was meant to become.

And somehow, strangely, beautifully…
I’m proud of every so-called mistake.
Every plan that fell apart.
Every heartbreak that knocked the wind out of me.

Because the sum of those moments — the soft ones and the sharp ones — shaped the version of myself I get to be today.
And I love her. Not because she’s perfect, but because she’s real.
Because she kept going even when she had no idea where she was going.
Because she grew — painfully, slowly, stubbornly — into someone I’m genuinely proud of.

I’m not saying I have it all figured out.
But I am content. And hopeful.
And I trust that life gets better, even if it dips and twists and makes absolutely no sense while I‘m in it.

And in a funny way, I think we all eventually circle back to the child we once were.
Not by regressing — but by rediscovering the joy life temporarily took from us.
The softness. The curiosity. The unfiltered happiness.

Because once the growing turns into glowing, something shifts.
You reach a peak you’ve been climbing toward for years, and suddenly the view feels wide again.
The air tastes cleaner.
Your shoulders drop from your ears.
You exhale — fully — for the first time in years.
You finally feel present. Still. Alive.

And maybe that’s what life is all about: not becoming someone new, but returning to the most honest version of who you’ve always been.
The child who faced challenges with curiosity instead of fear.
The kid who didn’t worry about tomorrow and just built one more sandcastle before the rain started.

We have to lose parts of ourselves to make space for who we’re becoming.
We have to get a little lost — sometimes over and over — to grow into someone wiser, softer, stronger.
In a way, we lock the child inside us to survive adulthood — but we can’t forget to let that child back out.
We depend on our inner child to make it through adulthood — through life.

For now, I‘m going to play in the sand.
Until we meet again.