The Woman I Become Around My Elders

How family can make us feel 17 again, and what happens when we finally meet that younger version of ourselves with compassion.

There was something about the drive back from the cabin that stayed with me. The road stretched quietly through the Norwegian forest, tall pine trees on either side, sunlight flickering across the tarmac as we wound our way through the Highlands. I remember looking at this road and thinking about how strange it is that you can be nearly fifty years old, have built an entire life of your own, and still somehow become a much younger version of yourself when you are around the people who raised you.

When I am with my elders, I become aware of the family hierarchy in a way I don’t necessarily feel when I am on my own. I am not the eldest. I am the daughter, the niece, the younger one. My Dad, aunt, and uncle naturally hold a position of authority that I learnt to respect very early in life. I don’t make all the decisions. I adapt. I defer. I listen. And somewhere in that dynamic, I can feel myself slipping into an older version of Kiran.

Perhaps that’s why I have felt unusually vulnerable this time around.

Looking at photographs of myself from my late teens brought back something I hadn’t consciously thought about for a long time. I could remember the feeling of being that girl, not simply what she looked like. I remember how much of my inner world was occupied with trying to prove my worth, trying to be accepted, trying to be good enough. There was this underlying sense that perhaps if I tried a little harder, achieved a little more, behaved a little better, adapted a little more, I might finally arrive at that magical place where I felt completely secure in being enough.

And then I realised something on that drive through the trees: perhaps those feelings don’t disappear simply because we grow older. Sometimes they are still sitting quietly inside us, waiting for the environment that knows how to bring them back.

That’s the strange thing about family. You can spend years becoming yourself, building your own identity, making your own decisions, raising your children, creating your work, paying your bills, navigating heartbreak, and starting again. You can become a woman who knows herself in ways that the younger you couldn’t possibly have imagined. And then you sit beside your elders, and suddenly some ancient part of you remembers exactly who you were supposed to be in that room.

I don’t think this means I have gone backwards. If anything, I think I am finally able to see the pattern because I am no longer completely inside it. The woman I was at seventeen or eighteen was doing the best she could with what she knew. She wanted to belong. She wanted to be loved. She wanted to feel worthy. There is nothing shameful about that. But I don’t want to spend the next decade unconsciously carrying her need for approval into every room I enter.

Perhaps turning fifty isn’t only about becoming someone new. Perhaps it is also about recognising the younger women we have been and deciding which parts of them we want to carry forward.

The road kept unfolding in front of me as I thought about this, sunlight and shadows moving across the windscreen, the forest opening and closing around us. And I had this quiet realisation that maybe the work now is not to become harder, more independent, or less affected by the people I love. It is to be able to remain Kiran, even when I am back in the role of daughter, niece, sister, or whatever family role I happen to occupy.

I can love my elders without becoming the girl who needs their approval.

I can listen without automatically surrendering my authority.

I can be the younger one in the family without feeling like I am less important.

And perhaps most importantly, I can finally stop trying to prove that I am enough.

Because the woman driving through those Norwegian woods was already enough.

She just needed to remember ❤️

Kiran x

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