You're allowed to outgrow the person you used to be. Poem, by Friendship, at My poetic side

You're allowed to outgrow the person you used to be.

The skin you wore was a sturdy frame,

A house built out of a younger name.

It fit you well in the winter light,

When the days were short and the edges tight.

But rooms grow small when the spirit tallies,

And shadows stretch through the quiet valleys,

And you find that hallways once deemed wide

Are now too narrow for what’s inside.

It is not a fault to leave the door,

To pace no more on that dusty floor.

You are not a statue carved in stone,

Nor seeds of a harvest long since mown;

You are the tide that must claim the sand,

The river carving a different land.

To shed the heavy, the hushed, the small,

Is not a loss—it is the call.

So let the old self drift to sea,

A ghost of who you had to be.

You haven't failed, you haven't strayed,

You're simply outgrowing the bed you made.

The bloom requires the wilted leaf,

The joy is taller than the grief;

And standing here, in this wider view,

You are finally becoming you.