So many people in my family beg me to write and I flatly refuse (this librarian is a READER and not a WRITER)....and Sarah's beautiful, effortless style is confirmation to follow my gut.
Why waste time agonizing over a word processor and the writing process when one could sit back with a beverage of choice and enjoy the finished product of a REAL wordsmith? Thanks, Sarah. Once again.
P.S. Sometimes while I'm driving, lines of your "We had hoped" sermon pop into my head...even though it's been YEARS.
Beautiful, Sarah. And yes, your 74 year old self will bless today's memories just as much. I am every age I have ever been. Thankful that God's healing grace shows me the beauty and the bittersweet of each step along the path.
This one made me think of an upcoming move in my own life in a different way than I have been. I left the church I was raised in back in 2019 and my marriage in 2021. In a few weeks, I will be moving into my first rental home as a single mom. (My boys & I have been living with family since I left.) Oddly, the home is in the first neighborhood I remember living as a child.
It is a really small neighborhood with friends and former neighbors still living there. I will walk & drive past my old childhood home every day. It was not only the first place I have clear memories of living but where my dad started the church I was raised in, right there in the living room. This entire neighborhood is steeped in memories from my childhood and the beginnings of my family's church. I have been saying it feels full-circle in a way, to move back there for my first home with just me & my boys. I am truly relieved to have found a place of our own but have wondered what it will be like emotionally to walk that neighborhood daily again. To relive so much of where I began, where my church life began, after all that has happened since. This piece has me hoping it will maybe feel less like haunting and more like reclaiming.
Oh Sarah, this is a beautiful essay and it was also startling to read because I also grew up in Calgary and I have the same complicated feelings toward it. From the time I was very small I just had the sensation that I wasn't meant to be there, and I just also wasn't a very happy kid so the associations weren't positive ones. I left as soon as I could in search of places that suited me better. Like you, I have no ties there and no friends there anymore. The one time I did come back, ten years later, I had this awful feeling like all of the things I had done and been in the interim had just folded in on themselves and I was just that kid again, completely unchanged and still unhappy. I wasn't sorry to get out of there. Even when I went to Denver for the first time in 2019 for Evolving Faith, I had an amazing, transformative experience at the conference itself, but the physical landscape was so similar to Calgary that I had the same crashing-in-on-myself feeling again.
I live in Montreal now and it suits me better. I feel like I was meant to be here all along. But although I am not in Calgary I am having to tussle with aspects of my past self that keep popping up at the most inopportune moments. I was happy when I hit my forties because I thought, great, I have a stable job, I have friends, my family is in a good place, now I can enjoy everything instead of having to hustle all the time, but then my past exploded on me and it feels like I can't understand myself until I work through it. It's a lot to sort through and it is tiring.
I don't feel any desire to return to Calgary, but your essays are a good glimpse into the past for me, the Doc Martens, the Country 105, the Coca Cola stage, the things that seemed universal in the moment but were really just the result of a very specific time and place. I hope you will continue to write about these experiences and the way you're integrating them into your current understanding of yourself.
I’m sure this will resonate with so many who have moved away and then move back. As I read I thought about where I grew up and where I live now.
Isn’t amazing how we can experience so much and return home but it still takes time for home to be home again and I’m sure for some home may never feel the same again.
I recently read this quote that resonated with me and your essay today reminded me of it also. "There is so much of my past self that I don't resonate with anymore, but I love her just the same. She was growing. She was doing her best. She fought hard to get me here."
I'm pretty sure I walked the same stairs on 17 Avenue! I got a piercing though, not a tattoo. I wonder if that place is still there?
Your poignant message that we change into so many different versions of ourselves as we move through life is important. While we have many urgent examples of change in our society the one about folks carrying their younger self inside at the same time as they are shedding selves that are no longer serving them, or their world, needs to be said. It's ok to be all those people, embrace them and love them! Thank you for this!
I still refer to my hometown as "back home" even though I haven't liver there full-time in 15 years and have no intention of moving back ever. I visit semi-regularly since my mom and grandma still live there and have found that my mental map of the place is reluctant to update, so I'm now one of those people that thinks in terms of what those buildings used to be. As in, "I can't ever remember the name of that Mexican place, but it's where Prairie Rose used to be next to the laundromat. Have they decided what's going in the old KMart building yet?" I thought I would be a lot older when it happened.
I’m working on this myself. The being okay with past me part. So thank you a million times over for the stories and example. It will help guide me as I consider how this works for me. 💜
Beautiful essay. I recently read a book called West With Giraffes and this quote really resonated with me and I think also applies here "The land you grow up in is a forever thing, remembered when all else is forgotten, whether it did you right or did you wrong."
This was a delight to read, and an invitation to be open to my old selves more...we moved back to my hometown very suddenly back in 2018, after having lived in Nicaragua since 2008, and having left my hometown since 2003. Thank you for sharing this!
All the feels with this one, Sarah. Well done. The teenage Heather made some far more dire decisions, and it took me much longer to look her in the eyes and like her again. But I really do. She was brave and impetuous (perhaps fuelled by an abundance of fear and self doubt), very independent (perhaps fuelled by somewhat benign parental neglect), and knew how to curse like a sailor. She inappropriately medicated her undiagnosed imbalance of neurotransmitters, and got into cars driven by people equally medicated….and didn’t die. She thought she was fat and ugly (she was actually as cute as a button).
I’ve circled back to her and definitely see the seeds there of who I am today. Better medication and life experience and Jesus (not the whitewashed one) and people around me who love all of me and who understand where I’ve been….I actually, like in your recent photo set, see more of that Heather in who I am today than the whitewashed version I was in the interim….when I voted Reform once. I don’t curse as much, but recognize now and again, it may be apt.
Thanks for this. It’s made me smile and remember and be able to bless that hot mess.
Jul 4, 2023·edited Jul 4, 2023Liked by Sarah Bessey
Thank you for yet another funny and profound piece. 90s southeast Calgary Sarah was definitely cooler than 90s southeast Calgary me, but those places are my places too. I have the luxury of just visiting those fraught locations and turning away when the memories shine too brightly. Maybe I'll squint directly at them more often now.
So many people in my family beg me to write and I flatly refuse (this librarian is a READER and not a WRITER)....and Sarah's beautiful, effortless style is confirmation to follow my gut.
Why waste time agonizing over a word processor and the writing process when one could sit back with a beverage of choice and enjoy the finished product of a REAL wordsmith? Thanks, Sarah. Once again.
P.S. Sometimes while I'm driving, lines of your "We had hoped" sermon pop into my head...even though it's been YEARS.
🥹🥹🥹
Oh, yes. LOVE that sermon. ❤️
Beautiful, Sarah. And yes, your 74 year old self will bless today's memories just as much. I am every age I have ever been. Thankful that God's healing grace shows me the beauty and the bittersweet of each step along the path.
At age 75, I agree. We’re all one piece, with so many facets.
This one made me think of an upcoming move in my own life in a different way than I have been. I left the church I was raised in back in 2019 and my marriage in 2021. In a few weeks, I will be moving into my first rental home as a single mom. (My boys & I have been living with family since I left.) Oddly, the home is in the first neighborhood I remember living as a child.
It is a really small neighborhood with friends and former neighbors still living there. I will walk & drive past my old childhood home every day. It was not only the first place I have clear memories of living but where my dad started the church I was raised in, right there in the living room. This entire neighborhood is steeped in memories from my childhood and the beginnings of my family's church. I have been saying it feels full-circle in a way, to move back there for my first home with just me & my boys. I am truly relieved to have found a place of our own but have wondered what it will be like emotionally to walk that neighborhood daily again. To relive so much of where I began, where my church life began, after all that has happened since. This piece has me hoping it will maybe feel less like haunting and more like reclaiming.
Thank you.
Oh Sarah, this is a beautiful essay and it was also startling to read because I also grew up in Calgary and I have the same complicated feelings toward it. From the time I was very small I just had the sensation that I wasn't meant to be there, and I just also wasn't a very happy kid so the associations weren't positive ones. I left as soon as I could in search of places that suited me better. Like you, I have no ties there and no friends there anymore. The one time I did come back, ten years later, I had this awful feeling like all of the things I had done and been in the interim had just folded in on themselves and I was just that kid again, completely unchanged and still unhappy. I wasn't sorry to get out of there. Even when I went to Denver for the first time in 2019 for Evolving Faith, I had an amazing, transformative experience at the conference itself, but the physical landscape was so similar to Calgary that I had the same crashing-in-on-myself feeling again.
I live in Montreal now and it suits me better. I feel like I was meant to be here all along. But although I am not in Calgary I am having to tussle with aspects of my past self that keep popping up at the most inopportune moments. I was happy when I hit my forties because I thought, great, I have a stable job, I have friends, my family is in a good place, now I can enjoy everything instead of having to hustle all the time, but then my past exploded on me and it feels like I can't understand myself until I work through it. It's a lot to sort through and it is tiring.
I don't feel any desire to return to Calgary, but your essays are a good glimpse into the past for me, the Doc Martens, the Country 105, the Coca Cola stage, the things that seemed universal in the moment but were really just the result of a very specific time and place. I hope you will continue to write about these experiences and the way you're integrating them into your current understanding of yourself.
I love this post so much Sarah. Thanks for the peek into your former and current days in Calgary. So fun! ❤️❤️
I love the throwback picks.
I’m sure this will resonate with so many who have moved away and then move back. As I read I thought about where I grew up and where I live now.
Isn’t amazing how we can experience so much and return home but it still takes time for home to be home again and I’m sure for some home may never feel the same again.
Glad you all gave settled in well. ❤️
I recently read this quote that resonated with me and your essay today reminded me of it also. "There is so much of my past self that I don't resonate with anymore, but I love her just the same. She was growing. She was doing her best. She fought hard to get me here."
Thanks, Sarah. Beautiful essay.
I'm pretty sure I walked the same stairs on 17 Avenue! I got a piercing though, not a tattoo. I wonder if that place is still there?
Your poignant message that we change into so many different versions of ourselves as we move through life is important. While we have many urgent examples of change in our society the one about folks carrying their younger self inside at the same time as they are shedding selves that are no longer serving them, or their world, needs to be said. It's ok to be all those people, embrace them and love them! Thank you for this!
I wrote about reconciling with all those parts of us, the parts we carry around but hide and the ones that, as you pointed out, we forgot about. https://donnamcarthur.substack.com/p/good-girl-bad-girl
I still refer to my hometown as "back home" even though I haven't liver there full-time in 15 years and have no intention of moving back ever. I visit semi-regularly since my mom and grandma still live there and have found that my mental map of the place is reluctant to update, so I'm now one of those people that thinks in terms of what those buildings used to be. As in, "I can't ever remember the name of that Mexican place, but it's where Prairie Rose used to be next to the laundromat. Have they decided what's going in the old KMart building yet?" I thought I would be a lot older when it happened.
I’m working on this myself. The being okay with past me part. So thank you a million times over for the stories and example. It will help guide me as I consider how this works for me. 💜
Beautiful essay. I recently read a book called West With Giraffes and this quote really resonated with me and I think also applies here "The land you grow up in is a forever thing, remembered when all else is forgotten, whether it did you right or did you wrong."
Breathlessly beautifully written.
This was a delight to read, and an invitation to be open to my old selves more...we moved back to my hometown very suddenly back in 2018, after having lived in Nicaragua since 2008, and having left my hometown since 2003. Thank you for sharing this!
All the feels with this one, Sarah. Well done. The teenage Heather made some far more dire decisions, and it took me much longer to look her in the eyes and like her again. But I really do. She was brave and impetuous (perhaps fuelled by an abundance of fear and self doubt), very independent (perhaps fuelled by somewhat benign parental neglect), and knew how to curse like a sailor. She inappropriately medicated her undiagnosed imbalance of neurotransmitters, and got into cars driven by people equally medicated….and didn’t die. She thought she was fat and ugly (she was actually as cute as a button).
I’ve circled back to her and definitely see the seeds there of who I am today. Better medication and life experience and Jesus (not the whitewashed one) and people around me who love all of me and who understand where I’ve been….I actually, like in your recent photo set, see more of that Heather in who I am today than the whitewashed version I was in the interim….when I voted Reform once. I don’t curse as much, but recognize now and again, it may be apt.
Thanks for this. It’s made me smile and remember and be able to bless that hot mess.
I love this story of learning to "understand our old selves except through the perspective prism of time and experience, love and grace."
Thank you for yet another funny and profound piece. 90s southeast Calgary Sarah was definitely cooler than 90s southeast Calgary me, but those places are my places too. I have the luxury of just visiting those fraught locations and turning away when the memories shine too brightly. Maybe I'll squint directly at them more often now.
And just for fun in case you haven't come across them yet, here's a nostalgic Calgary places t-shirt shop. I definitely endorse! C of Dead: https://instagram.com/c_of_dead?igshid=MmU2YjMzNjRlOQ==