April 24th, 2026

Compost to Continuity

In a dream, I met a teenage girl.

She looked at me—really looked—  
the way we do when we’re still young enough  
to expect the truth.

“How old are you?” she asked.  
“And how much do you weigh?”

I opened my mouth… and paused.

For a moment,  
I couldn’t find myself in the question.

Then I remembered.

“I’m 67.”

She tilted her head, studying me—  
not with judgment…  
but with something softer.  
Something honest.

“We weigh about the same?”

And something in me…  
exhaled.

We just stood there.

Not comparing.  
Not measuring.  
Not trying to be more or less than we were.

Just… seeing.


But it hadn’t always been this way.

There were years—  
years of being shaped by other people’s perceptions.  
Years of being misread, mislabeled,  
fitted into stories that were never mine.

Years of trying to find myself  
inside systems that couldn’t actually see me.

I questioned everything.  
I unraveled everything.  
I felt things I didn’t want to feel—  
again and again—  
until there was nothing left to avoid.

That’s where Shadow Poopy came in.

Not as a joke.

As the part of me willing to stay.  
To sit in it.  
To turn it over.  
To remain… even when it was uncomfortable.  
Even when it was messy.  
Even when it would have been easier to walk away.

Nothing was wasted.


AnuBel stood nearby now,  
her lantern glowing softly between us.

“Look,” she whispered.

And I did.

The girl I had been—  
open, curious, still becoming.

The woman I had become—  
lived, aware, still here.

And suddenly…

there was no distance between us.

No gap to cross.  
No version of me to fix.  
No part of me to leave behind.

Just a quiet, undeniable truth:

I never actually lost her.

From behind us,  
Shadow Poopy leaned on his shovel,  
a small, knowing smile on his face.

“Told you,” he said.  
“Nothing goes to waste.”


Some things don’t need to be fixed.

But they do need to be felt.  
Seen.  
Lived all the way through.

And when they are…

what remains isn’t something new.

It’s something truer.

Something that was there all along:

I am still me.

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### A Gentle Reflection

If this stirred something in you, you’re not alone.

So many of us have spent years trying to understand who we are through the eyes of systems that couldn’t truly see us. We adapt, we question, we unravel—and somewhere along the way, we wonder if we’ve lost something essential.

But what if you haven’t?

What if the parts of you that feel distant…  
are not gone,  
just waiting to be seen again—without distortion?

You don’t have to go back and fix everything.

You only have to begin here:

With honesty.  
With presence.  
With a willingness to feel what’s real.

From there, something shifts.

And slowly, gently…

You may begin to recognize yourself again.


— AnuBel, LLC  
AnuBel.com

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