What the Mirror Doesn't Reveal
Every week begins with one question.
I record the conversation, spend a few hours editing it, upload the episode, and then I do something that has become part of my routine. I put in my AirPods, lace up my sneakers, and head out for a long walk. By then, I'm no longer listening as the host who's wondering whether I should have edited one more sentence or paused a little longer before making a point. I'm listening the same way everyone else will, curious to discover what the conversation stirs up in me once I've had a little distance from it.
More often than not, that's where these reflections begin.
This week, somewhere around the halfway point of my walk, I found myself thinking about the screensaver on my boyfriend's phone. It's a picture of me from about eight years ago, before so much gray hair, before knee replacement surgery, and before the extra twenty pounds I've been carrying these last few years. It's a beautiful picture, and I understand why he still has it there. The problem isn't the picture itself. The problem is that every time I see it, I stop seeing it as a memory and start seeing it as a comparison.
It happens almost automatically. Instead of remembering that season of my life, I immediately begin taking inventory of everything that's changed since then. I notice the gray hair, the wrinkles around my eyes, the weight I've gained, and before long I'm comparing the woman standing beside Dave today with the woman smiling back from that screen. Somewhere along the way, that photograph became less of a keepsake and more of a measuring stick, and I don't think I even realized I was doing it.
I'd mentioned the picture to Dave before. I told him it didn't really look like me anymore, and although that was true, it wasn't the whole truth. The truth was that every time I saw it, I found myself wishing I still looked like someone who lived an entirely different chapter of my life.
As I continued walking, it finally occurred to me how unfair that comparison really was.
The woman in that photograph hadn't lived the last eight years. She hadn't gone through knee replacement surgery or spent months rebuilding strength and learning to trust her body again. She hadn't written three books, started a podcast, built a new direction for her business, or lived through the countless experiences that have shaped who I am today. She wasn't a better version of me. She was simply an earlier version of me, and those are not the same thing.
By the time I reached the turnaround point, I pulled out my phone and took another picture.
My hair was pulled back, my cheeks were flushed from the heat, my glasses were sliding down my nose, and I'd just walked 4.53 miles. It wasn't a glamorous picture, but it was an honest one. My goal this summer is to make it all the way to the lake at the end of that road, a walk of about 5.6 miles that I probably haven't been able to complete in at least three years. I didn't make it that day, but for the first time I could see it. If you look closely at the photograph, there's a thin strip of water waiting at the bottom of the hill. The destination is still ahead of me, but it's finally within sight.
Standing there, I realized this photograph tells a much truer story than the one on Dave's phone ever could. Not because it's more flattering—it isn't—but because it reflects who I actually am today. It captures a body that has healed enough to carry me farther than it could not so long ago. It captures someone who's still moving toward a goal instead of looking backward at one she's already lived. More importantly, it reminds me that the healthiest version of myself isn't waiting somewhere behind me. She's still ahead of me.
As I thought back over this week's podcast, I realized that may have been the question beneath the question all along. We spend so much time asking the mirror to tell us whether we're aging well, whether we've gained weight, or whether we still resemble the person we used to be. But the mirror has never been equipped to answer those questions. It can only reflect a single moment in time. It can't show us what we've survived, what we've learned, how we've healed, or the strength we've gained by continuing to move forward when life asked us to.
Maybe that's what the mirror doesn't reveal.
It doesn't reveal resilience. It doesn't reveal courage. It doesn't reveal wisdom, gratitude, or the quiet confidence that often comes from living through seasons we never would have chosen for ourselves. And it certainly can't reveal the miles we've already walked or the destination that's just beginning to come into view.
Last weekend, before I left to visit Dave, I snapped a picture of myself wearing his favorite hockey team's hat and sent it to him with a message letting him know I was on my way. A little while later, I sent another text.
Will you change your screensaver to this one, please?
When I got there, I told him why.
I explained what I'd realized on my walk and how seeing that old photograph had become a way of measuring myself against a woman I used to be. He understood. And he changed the picture.
There's something unexpectedly meaningful about knowing that when his phone lights up now, the woman looking back at him is me as I am today. Gray hair, laugh lines, extra twenty pounds and all.
Maybe I needed to see her that way too.
If you haven't listened to this week's episode of The Becoming Podcast or spent some time with this week's question, What Do You See?, I hope you will. Not because I think you'll arrive at the same reflection I did, but because that's the beauty of beginning with a question. We don't always know where it will take us.
Maybe there's an old picture you've been comparing yourself to. Maybe it's an old version of your career, your body, your relationships, or your life. Maybe you've been so busy noticing what's changed that you haven't stopped to consider everything those changes have carried you through.
So perhaps the question isn't whether you still look like the person you used to be.
Perhaps the question is whether you're willing to really see the person you've become.
Becoming, always returning,
Carrie
Carrie Woodcock
Owner Total Transformation
NBC-HWC Health Coach
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