When I think about my daughter and when she asks to see photos of my younger self, I want to show her all versions of me.

Not the perfect or non-perfect, not the clothed or non-clothed, not the can-do-fancy moves or not, not the more toned or less toned, not the social-media-ready or not. Just the mom in every version she ever was.

The thing is everyone in this world is always segmenting their lives into this version and that version, this look and that look, this perfect and that imperfect. I want to show her wholeness, a human evolving and going through their life unapologetically, wavering through different variations of her human self.

Why? Because the only constant is change, and all of it was and is the real me.

Think about it. Life is a cycle, and that cycle not only extends to cycling through the human variations of ourselves but the cycles of our children and grandparents as well.

However, all is a version of life; all has its magic and lessons learned.

How are our children going to learn wholeness if they have to be ashamed, hide, disregard, or apologize for a version they no longer are? How will they know us as parents if we only show them one side? How will they know that it’s okay to be a zillion different things all rolled into one?

I agree we do not owe perfection to anyone, but we also do not want to filter our life because the world—us—says this is more real version of us or not, when we share our younger selves. We don’t want to erase our evolution to becoming who we are because without one version, we can’t be the next.

Let us get comfortable in being who we are, in every version of who we are, and remember that those versions are part of the journey of our life. They are part of the human experience of learning and growing and evolving.

Healing is the ability to let love reside where fear once did. Wholeness is the ability to be every version of ourselves with no justifications. Just know that the only constant is change. So let us change.

Let us be everything and let our children see it is okay to do the same. Everything is a stepping stone in real life, leading to the real version of us.

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