Episode 40: We Don’t Become Who We Are Alone
Who helped shape the person you’re becoming?
Last week, we looked backward at the versions of ourselves we couldn’t see yet—the ways we were growing, healing, learning, and becoming while we were busy living.
But there’s another question hiding inside that one:
Who was becoming beside us?
Because when we look backward, there are often people everywhere.
People who stayed. People who showed up. People who challenged us. People who carried something when we couldn’t carry every piece ourselves. People who saw something in us before we could see it.
And somewhere along the way, their lives shaped ours.
And ours may have shaped theirs too.
Featured Quote
“We don’t become who we are alone.”
Listen or Watch
About This Episode
Somewhere along the way, my husband John became the person I tell.
Good news. Bad news. Something ridiculous. Something that irritated me. An idea I’m excited about. Something I’m still trying to figure out.
He’s been part of almost my entire adult life—and when I started looking backward at all the versions of myself we’ve been talking about lately, I realized something:
I had been talking about becoming as though I’d done it by myself.
I hadn’t.
John is woven through it.
So are friends. Family. Pastors. Mentors. Our little church community. People who stayed for decades and people who appeared for only a season.
In this deeply personal conversation, we’re looking at the relationships woven through our becoming.
We’ll talk about a marriage that nearly ended before we learned how to repair, friends who showed up when there was nothing they could fix, people who carried one small piece during grief, relationships that made room for disappointment without turning it into abandonment, and an eighty-four-year-old woman named Janis who is apparently getting a little impatient about my future. 😂
But this isn’t a conversation about needing other people to complete us.
And it isn’t an argument for staying in relationships that are harmful.
It’s about something quieter:
Healthy relationships can give us room to become more fully ourselves—and sometimes we don’t realize how much another person’s life has shaped ours until we look backward.
Key Takeaways
We become in relationship.
Personal growth can feel like something that happens entirely inside us—our choices, healing, faith, maturity, and perseverance.
But other people are often woven through that growth.
Sometimes they teach us intentionally.
Sometimes simply loving them requires us to learn something we hadn’t learned yet.
Patience. Courage. Boundaries. Compassion. Honesty. Humility. Endurance.
Healthy relationships make room for becoming.
The people we love aren’t finished.
Neither are we.
Healthy relationship doesn’t require two people to become more alike. It can give each person room to become more fully themselves.
And sometimes loving another unfinished human being means making room for growth while still telling the truth about what hurts.
Carrying someone isn’t the same as rescuing them.
There are parts of another person’s story we simply cannot carry for them.
We cannot grieve for them.
Make every decision for them.
Heal them.
Or fix what hurts.
But sometimes we can look at everything surrounding the thing we cannot fix, find one piece we can carry, and pick it up.
I’ve got this part.
Sometimes that’s what love looks like.
Showing up matters even when nothing has changed.
Unfinished stories can make people uncomfortable.
What do we do when the court case is still going?
The diagnosis hasn’t changed?
The job still hasn’t come?
The child is still struggling?
The prayer request is the same one we’ve been praying for six months?
Sometimes there isn’t a solution.
Sometimes relationship looks like refusing to disappear simply because the story has outlasted our ability to fix it.
Disappointment doesn’t automatically mean rejection.
Real relationships include disappointment.
We misunderstand each other.
We miss things.
We say something badly.
Sometimes we’re simply wrong.
One of the gifts of a healthy relationship is enough safety to tell the truth, own what happened, repair what can be repaired, and keep going.
But repair is not the same as tolerating repeated harm.
It requires participation, accountability, and enough safety for honesty.
Sometimes somebody else sees us before we can.
There are people who recognize something in us before we’re ready to recognize it ourselves.
Their belief doesn’t have to become pressure.
Sometimes it becomes borrowed courage.
They don’t tell us who we are.
They notice something that helps us begin to recognize ourselves.
Eventually, we become those people for someone else.
Someone showed up for us.
Someone encouraged us.
Someone walked across the room with us.
Someone remembered the appointment.
Someone believed we could.
And eventually, we get the opportunity to do that for another person.
Healthy community reproduces itself when the people who have been loved learn how to love somebody else.
Featured Resource
Companion Guide: We Don’t Become Who We Are Alone — A Relationship & Formation Map
Your story isn’t only made of what happened. It’s also made of who was there.
This 44-page Companion Guide helps you look across your story and notice the people who saw you, showed up, carried something with you, challenged you, modeled something you needed, grew beside you, and helped shape who you are becoming.
Then you’ll turn the map around.
Because while other people were becoming part of your story, you were becoming part of theirs too.
Through four guided conversations, reflection prompts, practical invitations, and the signature Relationship & Formation Map, you’ll explore what others gave you, how relationships continue to change as people grow, and whose story your own life may be quietly shaping now.
Continue the Conversation
Devotional 40: When People Become Too Much
Thursday, we’ll slow this conversation down, open Scripture, and make room to reflect on what it means to need one another without asking another human being to become everything we need.
We can replace this with the actual devotional title/copy once it’s written.
Continue the Journey
If this conversation resonated with you, you may also want to explore:
- Episode 39: The Person I Couldn’t See Yet
- Devotional 39: Remember What You Know
- Episode 36: Learning to See the Story Behind the Story
- Episode 33: When Healing Changes Who You Are Becoming
Related Resources
- Free Episode Reflection: The Person I Couldn’t See Yet
- Free Episode Reflection: Learning to See the Story Behind the Story
Reflection Question
Think about the different versions of yourself you’ve been.
Who has been part of your becoming?
Who saw something in you?
Who challenged you?
Who carried one small piece when you couldn’t carry everything?
Who showed up even when they couldn’t fix what was happening?
Who stayed long enough to know more than one version of you?
And then turn the question around:
Whose becoming have you been invited to be part of?
Not whose life are you responsible for.
Not who needs you to fix them.
Just… Who has God placed near you?
Maybe someone needs you to walk across the room with them.
Maybe someone needs you to remember the appointment.
Maybe someone needs you to ask again even though the answer hasn’t changed.
Maybe someone needs you to see something good in them without turning it into pressure.
Maybe they simply need to hear:
“I don’t know what happens next either. But I’m here.”
Final Thought
When I look backward now, I don’t only see the woman I became.
I see people everywhere.
John is almost the entire through-line.
Debi is walking across a funeral home beside my son.
Lynne is caring for my dad.
Rachel and Mike are sitting at a funeral Mass for a man they never met because they love his daughter.
Kevin disappears from one chapter and walks back into another years later.
There are my siblings.
My boys.
Our little Regen flock.
And Janis—apparently standing somewhere on a future stage before I’ve even gotten there, checking her watch. 😂
They’re everywhere.
And I’m in their stories too.
Sometimes I was being carried.
Sometimes I was carrying.
Sometimes somebody told me the truth.
Sometimes I told it.
Sometimes someone saw something in me that I couldn’t see.
Sometimes I got to see something in them.
We have been becoming beside one another all along.
We don’t have to know who everyone will become.
We don’t have to know how every story ends.
We don’t have to fix each other.
We get to be faithful with the people God has placed in front of us today.
Love them.
Tell the truth.
Make room.
Carry what we can.
Let them carry something too.
And keep becoming.
Together.