46 Trips Around the Sun: What Old Photos Taught Me About Healing, Identity & the Unexpected Gift of IEMT

It's my 46th birthday this week.

I thought about marking it the way people do on the internet, one of those "who's going to tell her?" photo roundups, the kind where you scroll through decades of yourself and cringe, laugh, or both. So I pulled out the old albums and started looking.

What I found surprised me.

The Girl in the Photos
The baby photos and early childhood snapshots are sweet but distant. I can piece together the context: a birthday cake, a Christmas morning, a family holiday, but I can't feel myself inside those moments. That little girl is mine in the way a character in a beloved book is yours: familiar, but separate.

The teenage years are different. My best friend and I were obsessed with taking photos, and those albums are full of laughter so vivid I can practically still hear it.
And then: marriage. Motherhood. Young and fully in it.

Being Someone's Mother for Half My Life
Here's a number that stopped me in my tracks this year: I have officially been someone's mother for half of my life.

Looking at those photos, my daughters with their impossibly chubby cheeks and boisterous smiles, my son, the apple of all of our eyes - there was a deep ache in my chest. The best kind of ache. The kind that means something mattered.

I saw every version of myself in those images: someone's wife, someone's mom, pregnant again (and again, and again), single, then someone else's wife. Divorced again.  Life, in all its beautiful, messy iterations.

I saw my brother, young, tall, a genuinely hilarious uncle. I saw my sister, always beside me, always laughing. I honestly don't know how I would have raised my children without her. She is one of the greatest constants of my life.

I saw my own mom, not much older than I am now, kneeling in garden photos and pulling kids onto her lap. What a gift my parents' involvement was. Weekends at Grandpa's house, visits to Grandma's, a steady undercurrent of love and support that my children grew up in.

A Trip Down Memory Lane (Without the Grief)
I was emotional going through those photos. 

But here's what was different: it wasn't sadness.

It was joy. Pure, full-bodied joy. The kind that makes you think: I would take all of it back. Every hard, exhausting, beautiful moment of it. What once felt impossibly challenging, when viewed from here, looks like perseverance. Like growth. Like a life actually lived.

And I know exactly why I was able to feel it that way.

The Unexpected Side Effect of IEMT Nobody Talks About
I'm an Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) practitioner, and I've experienced the work firsthand as a client. Most conversations about IEMT focus on its power to process difficult emotions: grief, frustration, fear, painful memories.

But today I want to talk about a side effect that doesn't get nearly enough airtime.

After doing IEMT work, I can look back at my entire life without judgement.

Not through a lens of regret. Not with the urge to delete photos of an ex or cringe away from old versions of myself. Not with the heavy, complicated grief that so often colours nostalgia.

Instead: gratitude. Appreciation. A genuine, settled love for every version of me that shows up in those photos: the young mom, the woman starting over, the girl who was just figuring it out.

Could I have done some things differently? Of course. But for the first time in a long time, I don't need to armour myself against my own history to answer that honestly.
That is an extraordinary thing. And it gives me real hope for the years ahead; that they can be even more joy-filled, now that I've made peace with the ones behind me.

When Your Identity Gets Outgrown: The Transition Nobody Names
Having my children young meant I arrived at a version of empty nest syndrome earlier than most.

For a season, I had quietly forgotten something important: being a mother is not my identity. It's a part of who I am, one beautiful, defining piece of a much larger whole.

The feelings that arrive when something you've devoted years of energy to becomes self-sustaining  (or complete)  are rarely discussed openly. But they are so common. I see it regularly with my own clients: not just in parenting transitions, but at graduation, retirement, after a long relationship ends, after a major career chapter closes.

These are the quiet identity earthquakes. The "who am I now?" moments. They deserve far more space in the conversation.

Change Is Slow, and Then All at Once
I was speaking with someone recently about one of the more unexpected shifts I noticed after my own IEMT sessions: I could leave dirty dishes in the sink.
I was laughing as I said: "maybe you can't relate, but if you know, you know" and she understood immediately. Because it's never really about the dishes.

With subconscious modalities, change doesn't always announce itself. At first it can feel like nothing is shifting. And then one day, you pull out a box of old photos on your birthday, and you realize: everything has.

46, and Actually Looking Forward
In many ways, I can't believe that 20 years have passed since some of those memories. It feels like yesterday and like another lifetime, both at once.
But I'm not sitting here wishing I could go back. I'm sitting here grateful for all of it, for right now, and for what's still ahead.

Happy birthday to me. I can't wait to see what comes next.

If any of this resonated with you, whether you're navigating a big life transition, struggling to look back without regret, or simply curious about IEMT,  I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly.