When You’ve Outgrown Your Life

Kind of like a hermit crab.

I know, hermit crabs are a weird place to start. But stick with me.

Hermit crabs spend their lives searching for bigger shells. Not because the old one is broken but becomes it’s too small.

I think humans are the same.

I can’t tell you exactly when I outgrew my own shells. There wasn’t a single moment or a dramatic realization. It was slower, years really. Almost un-noticeable at times.

A hundred little moments where the life I’d built stopped feeling right.

Since life looked successful from the outside, it becomes surprisingly difficult to admit that it didn’t feel the way I wanted it too.

When I finally found the courage to share those feelings, they were met with some version of positivity. “But you did it”, “But you should be proud”, “So many people would love to be in your position”, “You have so much to be grateful for”, “It could be so much worse”, "Maybe you just need a vacation."

(For the record, I did need a vacation. It just wasn't going to solve my existential crisis.)

There’s a saying that people can only meet us as deeply as they’ve met themselves. I've come to believe that responses like this aren’t about the person who's hurting. They're about the discomfort of the person listening: Trying to make someone feel better is often easier than allowing them to feel heard.

Sometimes the most healing thing you can say to another person is simply, “That sounds really hard.”

These days, my tolerance for uncomfortable feelings wrapped in a motivational quote is approximately zero. Not because I’m cynical. Because I’ve learned that you can’t bypass grief, confusion, or change with gratitude.

Can perspective help?

Absolutely.

But only when you’re ready for it.

Back then, I kept trying to squeeze myself into the old me, the one others expected me to be. The woman who could set a goal, put her head down, and make it happen. It never occurred to me that maybe I wasn't lost. Maybe I'd simply outgrown the person I was trying so hard to be.

I thought packing up my life in Utah and moving to Oregon would be a fresh start, and it was, but it was only the first step in a much longer journey.

The dark truth? If I hadn’t gone, I don’t know if I would have survived. I wasn’t just starting again. I was digging myself out of darkness and I underestimated how much healing would ask of me. I wanted to process years and layers-on-layers of pain in a few short months. Boy did I get a reality check! Healing isn’t something we can rush through and simply jump back into the life we once had. The person who tries to go back, isn’t the same version as the one that left.

I’m not the version that moved to Oregon. I’m not the version that lived in Oregon. I’m also not the version that left Oregon. My self-worth didn’t magically return. And the self-doubt didn’t just disappear. (Which, at that time, was unbelievably frustrating!)

Instead, I learned that healing isn’t really about returning or becoming someone entirely new. It’s about creating enough space to meet the person you’re already becoming.

I think that's why the space between one shell and the next feels so uncomfortable. We can’t go back to the old shell, but the new one doesn’t feel right either. It’s easy to think we’ve made a mistake.

Maybe the uncomfortable in-between isn’t evidence that life is falling apart. Maybe it’s just evidence that we’ve outgrown the version we were trying so hard to keep.

How many shells have you outgrown?