Hindsight & Looking Back

Challenges May Become Opportunities 

We are all faced with different challenges throughout our lives. Some challenges are loud and disruptive, like grief, loss, illness, and betrayal. Others are quieter, like self-doubt, uncertainty, and a path that no longer feels like home. What they all have in common is this: they call us to grow and listen more closely. 

Sometimes, we don’t even realize how far we’ve come until life gives us the space to look back.

I can remember a few times at work when I had large-scale projects due, and I kept putting them off because I didn’t have all the tools I needed. I was overwhelmed. But eventually, I got the ball rolling. I pulled together the right systems, files, and programs… and something shifted. Those projects forced me to organize in a way I hadn’t before—and because of that, all of the projects that followed were easier, more efficient. What once felt like a burden became a blueprint. 

And in a much deeper way, I’ve also experienced this with grief. There were moments in my life when the pain of losing someone I loved brought me to my knees.  In the quiet aftermath, I found myself reaching—not for closure, but for connection. I deep dove into spirituality. I studied, listened, and sat in stillness. At first, I was just trying to find a way to feel close to those I’d lost. But that sacred search opened a path I never could’ve imagined. A path that led to an awakening, to purpose, and to the kind of light I now try to share with others.

Have you ever looked back at something you once labeled a “problem”… only to realize it was the very thing that helped you become who you are? That’s the quiet gift of hindsight. Life has a mysterious way of wrapping our biggest breakthroughs in uncomfortable packaging. At first glance, a challenge can feel like an obstacle, a block, or even a punishment. But when you take a breath, zoom out, and listen deeply, it often reveals itself as an opportunity. An invitation that nudges the soul.

I’ve come to see that our challenges aren’t here to break us. They’re here to shape us.

When things fall apart, sometimes it’s because the old version of ourselves no longer fits. When a door closes, it might be because something higher is trying to reroute us. When we feel resistance, it could be pointing to where healing is ready to happen. Here’s a gentle reframe I’ve been using: Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?” I ask, “What is this trying to teach me? What might be trying to emerge?” Even the smallest willingness to look for the opportunity inside the challenge is an act of spiritual strength.

And when you get the chance to look back and turn around, you’ll see the miracle in just how much light shined through your difficulties and helped you grow. 

Offer Yourself Grace During the Look-Back

Why clarity often arrives after the storm has passed.

I don’t judge my past self the same way I once did because I can finally see what I was carrying. There are versions of us who moved through life with their hands full—full of fear, responsibility, grief, uncertainty, other people’s expectations, and questions we didn’t yet have language for. In the moment, we call it “messy" or "hard", we call it “I should’ve known better.” But later—sometimes much later—we look back and realize: I wasn’t careless. I was just holding onto a lot.

I’ve been thinking about how often we demand immediate meaning. We want to understand why something happened while it’s still happening. We want the lesson before life has finished teaching it. We want clarity on Day One.

Yet so much of life doesn’t work that way.

Some experiences are meant to be lived first—felt all the way through—before they can be understood. It’s not that we’re failing to “get it.” It’s that wisdom has a timing to it. Integration is not instantaneous. Perspective requires space.

There’s a quiet mercy in that.

I think of it like walking through fog. When you’re inside it, you can only see a few feet ahead. You take one step, then another, guided by instinct and whatever light you have. You don’t have the whole map. You don’t get the overhead view. Then one day you’re out of the fog, and you turn around—and you can finally see what you were walking through.

And that’s when compassion becomes possible. Because in the look-back period, we stop asking ourselves, “Why was I like that?” and start asking, “What was I trying to survive?” We recognize the protective choices we made. The ways we coped. The ways we stayed functional. The ways we stayed loving even when we were tired. The ways we kept going even when we didn’t feel brave.

Sometimes what we regret most is simply the part where we didn’t yet know what we know now.

Sometimes the “wrong turn” we replay in our minds was actually a necessary detour—one that brought us to an insight, a boundary, a healing, a new beginning. Sometimes a hard season wasn’t meant to make perfect sense while we were in it, because we were inside the work of becoming. And becoming is rarely tidy.

The grace of the look-back period is that it returns us to ourselves with gentler eyes, and it gives us the chance to re-meet the past with tenderness instead of critique. It lets us say: I see you. I understand why you did that. You were doing the best you could with what you knew, and what you had, and what you were carrying.

Looking back with light

If you feel called, take five quiet minutes and reflect:

• What version of me am I still judging?
• What was she carrying that I didn’t fully acknowledge at the time?
• What did she need that she didn’t know how to ask for?
• What did that season teach me—slowly, over time?
• If I could offer her one sentence now, what would it be?

You don’t need to rewrite the past. You only need to witness it honestly—without punishment, because hindsight isn’t just information. Sometimes it’s healing. Sometimes it’s the moment your heart finally catches up to your story. Sometimes it’s where forgiveness becomes real—not because everything was okay, but because you can finally see the full context.

And maybe this is what growth looks like: not erasing the hard chapters but honoring the way you made it through them. Letting your present self offer grace to the one who walked through it without a map.

Sometimes the purpose of a hard season is only visible from the shoreline, not the waves.