The Marks of Progress
The other day I stumbled upon a list in my Notes app that I had completely forgotten about. Titled “Predictions for June 2026,” it was created on June 30, 2025, and it is evident that I went around, person by person, and wrote down a list of all the things my husband and kids predicted would be in place for them one year from that point. One immediate thought when I saw this was that next time I create such a list, I need to write down somewhere that I did so! June 2026 came and went without me even knowing I had this list to return to. Such is life! Such good ideas, and then you miss the follow up.
But hey, I still found it in August, 2026, which isn’t too far off, really, and I wanted to share the list that I had come up with a year and two months ago-
It took me about 5 attempts to fat-thumb black lines over the name of my old company!
I think looking at this in August instead of June is actually what I needed. And that is because this summer felt so challenging for me- which I’ve detailed in previous posts. I had to pause everything- my business, the daily writing practice I had been really fostering. I had to put everything on hold as I got my family through the summer. And that felt really crummy.
Well, then I stumbled upon my list of predictions from June 2025, and my mind shifted a bit. Because look at that- look at how much I’ve done. I had so many hopes for the year, back in June 2025, and out of the list, the only thing I really didn’t do was get another tattoo! I did leave my job, I did become certified through Wellcoaches, I did write through a lot of my childhood, and I DID create my death napkin (what is a death napkin? Basically a document shared with my husband where we list all our various accounts so that we can access what we need if one of us dies).
It’s so easy to get into negative loops when we don’t feel that things are going the way that they should. Sometimes though, it’s okay to just sit in a space of quiet and acknowledge how far you really HAVE come. Throughout the summer my husband reminded me so often of how much I have worked over the past twenty years. That it was okay to not be racing through life at the same speed as I have been. Of course, I wanted so much to get back on my own schedule and to move ahead with my business. My husband understood my frustrations around this, but he also reminded me that I have done so much with my career and our family in our time together. He also knows my propensity to feel like I’m not doing enough, and reminded me over and over again that I didn’t owe anyone anything. That I was enough just where I was.
So why am I feeling called to share this? Maybe because I sense, in the ways that I don’t always take note of my own progress, that maybe you find yourself in a similar spot. Maybe you are working on changing something– with your life, with your work, with your relationships, and you have your eyes so focused on the end-result that you can’t see all the steps you’ve made along the way. Even the smallest step forward is still a step forward.
It is so easy to be hard on ourselves and to bully ourselves through certain phases of life, as though that is exactly what we need. That exercise often comes up where someone says, “think of a close friend. Would you talk to that friend the way that you are talking to yourself now?” It’s thinking of my kids that really stops me short with this exercise. I can’t imagine them being reprimanded this way, and with kids, it’s so easy to see how they would never be able to grow and flourish from that treatment.
And so! In conclusion, as I write this on a Friday afternoon, what kind of support and kindness do you need for where you are in this moment? Can you celebrate your wins, even the smallest ones? I promise I will if you do.
