Post by Abigail Festus (@abigailfestus)

THE IN-BETWEEN WOMAN

Living between who I was and who I was slowly leaving behind
There is a strange place women enter quietly.
This place is not announced. There is no ceremony for it.

You only realize you are there when the old version of you starts to feel unfamiliar, and the new one hasn’t fully introduced herself yet.
I call this place the in-between.
It is where I found myself, standing between who I was and who I was slowly leaving behind. Not because I hated her. Not because she failed. But because life was gently, firmly asking me to grow past her.

The in-between woman still remembers her old rhythms.
How she moved through life without thinking too deeply about her body.
How she made plans without measuring time differently.
How she dreamed freely, assuming tomorrow would always wait.

But the woman she is becoming moves slower.
She listens more.
She carries weight differently, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
She feels joy and fear in the same breath.

For a long time, I thought becoming would feel like clarity.
Like a clean break.
Like waking up one day and knowing, this is who I am now.
Instead, it felt like grieving someone who was still alive.
There were days I missed myself.
Missed how light I used to feel.
Missed how certain I thought I was.
Missed how easily I could move through the world without carrying so much awareness.

No one tells you that growth can feel like loss.
That becoming can feel like mourning a version of yourself that no longer fits, but still mattered.
In the in-between, I learned that you can love who you were and still need to leave her behind.
That honoring your past does not mean living there.
This season didn’t ask me to disappear.
It asked me to expand.

But expansion is uncomfortable.
It stretches you in ways that don’t always look beautiful from the inside.
I was becoming quieter, but deeper.
Softer, but stronger.
Less eager to prove, more willing to protect my peace.

And still, I questioned myself.
Am I changing too much?
Will people still recognize me?
Do I recognize myself?
The in-between woman asks these questions often.
She doubts herself not because she is weak, but because she is evolving.

This season taught me that identity is not lost overnight.
It is loosened slowly.
Like clothing that no longer fits the body it once belonged to.
You don’t tear it off.
You outgrow it.
I began to notice that the things I was releasing were not being taken from me, they were being replaced. Certainty was replaced with trust. Speed with intention. Independence with interdependence. Control with surrender.

And motherhood, whether anticipated or already present, has a way of accelerating this shift. It asks you to make room. In your body. In your heart. In your understanding of love.
You begin to realize that becoming a mother starts long before a child arrives.
It starts the moment your inner world rearranges itself to make space for someone else.

In the in-between, I learned to stop rushing myself.
To sit with the discomfort of not having language for who I was becoming yet.
To let the process unfold without forcing an identity onto it.

This woman, this in-between woman, is not unfinished.
She is becoming.
She is learning that it is okay to pause.
Okay to change her mind.
Okay to need time.
She is learning that growth does not require an audience.
That some transformations are meant to be private.

If you are here too—between versions of yourself, know this:
You are not behind.
You are not confused beyond repair.
You are not losing yourself.
You are shedding.
You are stretching.
You are becoming.
And one day, gently, without realizing when it happened, you will look back and recognize her, the woman you are slowly leaving behind, not with regret, but with gratitude.
Because she carried you here.

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