Last year in December, I had a dream. I was windsurfing, full speed, wind in my hair, alive. There was a guy windsurfing with me. I didn’t know who he was at the time, just that he felt familiar in that weird dream way. Some months later, I stumbled upon him on Instagram. And surprise, he was real. Not dream real – actual human real. We started talking. Great guy. Aligned values. Deep conversations. I didn’t even realize he was the guy from the dream because I was too busy trying to decode the rest of it.

After the windsurfing scene, the dream took a turn. I gave birth to myself. In someone’s yard. In the dark. He wasn’t even home. I saw the baby (the new me) with her big sparkling eyes, looking at me like she already knew who she was. She wanted to be loved, to be held. Then he came home. I was trying to show him the baby, to show him this new me. He didn’t even turn his head. Just said, “We are already over, why should I care?” in his deep, annoyed voice and walked inside, closing the door.

We weren’t over when I had that dream. But after it, I knew it was coming. I waited for the text. And it came.

It’s been months since that dream. Two, maybe three lifetimes’ worth of emotional growth since I had it. I spent the first two months just enjoying myself; doing things that made me happy, not sulking in pain, focusing on me. Then came the real rebirth. It happened in the dark, unpacking baggage, facing shadows, meeting myself where I’d left her. And just like in the dream, it all happened “in his yard while he wasn’t home.”

And like the version of me in that dream, I kept wanting to show him the new me. The healed me. The peaceful me. The “look, I’ve grown” me. But he wasn’t looking.

I still remember that baby’s face like it was last night: peaceful, radiant, full of light. Born in the dark, in someone’s yard, unseen but completely whole.

And that’s the thing about healing, isn’t it? We want the people we love to see it. To witness our transformation. To validate the pain that made us who we are now. But often, by the time we’re reborn, they’re gone.

The yard (as much symbolism as it held) showed me something profound. That connection gave me the space I needed to break down and rebuild. It wasn’t meant to last forever. It was meant to awaken something in me.

And maybe that’s what I needed to finally see, that the love I was trying so hard to show, to prove, to share, was meant for me all along.

Because the truth is, the love we crave… it’s been inside us the whole time.