There are things I thought I had outgrown.
Certain feelings.
Certain doubts.
Certain versions of myself I was sure I had already moved past.
And then, without much warning, they came back.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
Just… enough.
Enough to notice.
Enough to feel.
I used to think Easter was about beginning again.
But lately, it doesn’t feel like that to me.
It feels like returning.
This past year, I’ve tried very hard to move forward.
To be more composed.
More certain.
More… steady.
I told myself I had learned the lessons. That I had closed certain chapters properly.
And then something small happens—
a conversation, a quiet moment, a memory that slips in when I’m not paying attention—
and I realize I’m standing in a place I thought I had already left.
A line from Mary Oliver has been sitting with me:
“I’ll take grace.”
Because I don’t think everything returns because we want it to.
Some things come back because they belong to us.
Not to haunt us.
Not to undo us.
But to be seen again, differently.
There were months where I felt… distant from myself.
I was functioning. Working. Moving.
But something felt slightly out of reach.
Like I was living just beside my own life instead of fully inside it.
And then, slowly, I started to feel things again.
Not all pleasant.
Not all convenient.
But real.
Emily Dickinson wrote:
“Hope is the thing with feathers—”
I used to read that as something comforting.
Now I read it differently.
Hope doesn’t fix anything.
It just stays.
Even when you’d rather not feel it.
Even when it asks you to care again.
And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.
The return of feeling is not always gentle.
It asks something of you.
To respond.
To engage.
To be present again, even when it would be easier not to.
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I’ve noticed that I’m softer this season.
Not weaker.
Just… less guarded.
Things reach me more easily.
Small moments stay with me longer than they used to.
And I don’t rush to push them away.
There’s a line from T.S. Eliot:
“April is the cruellest month…”
I think I understand that now.
Because returning—really returning—means letting things surface.
Not just the beautiful parts.
All of it.
But there is something quietly beautiful about that too.
I am not who I was the last time I felt these things.
I hold them differently now.
More gently.
More honestly.
Without the same urgency to fix or escape them.
So maybe Easter, for me this year, isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about meeting myself again.
And not turning away this time.
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Not everything that returns is a step backward.
Some things come back
so you can finally hold them
the way you couldn’t before.
And maybe that’s enough.
Not a transformation.
Not a resolution.
Just a quiet willingness
to stay.
