I’ve been thinking about how easily we forget that nothing stays the same. We build our lives around routine rhythms, specific rooms, certain people and without realizing it, we begin to believe those patterns are permanent.
But this past year reminded me how subtly and completely life can rearrange itself.
My grandmother passed last year. And her absence did something I wasn’t prepared for: it unmade the structure of how our extended family gathered. I realize now that we didn’t just gather with her—we gathered for her. She was the gentle center of gravity pulling all of us into the same room. When she was alive, the choreography made sense: the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, the laughter, the food, the familiar rhythm of everyone returning to the same place.
And when she was gone, that pattern dissolved because the anchor that held the shape together was no longer there.
Around the same time, my nephew was born. A new life, incredibly timed, impossibly tender. His arrival formed a new pattern. And suddenly, the center of gravity shifted again. My mom and stepdad had the freedom to travel, to be with him, to follow the thread that was pulling them forward. It made sense. It was beautiful. But it was also a reminder that nothing stays still. Even joy changes the landscape.
Somewhere in the contrast of those two moments—one life ending, one life beginning—I realized something I think many of us quietly know but rarely say:
Most of the change in our lives doesn’t start inside us. It begins around us.
We evolve because life evolves first. We shift because the ground moves beneath us. We grow because everything around us leaves us no choice but to adapt. We simply learn how to exist inside it.
And I think we’re all feeling our way through that together—my mom and stepdad, my sister, me. Each of us adjusting, each of us finding where we fit now that the old choreography has ended.
The beauty world has taught me something about this, in a quiet, almost accidental way: nothing stays where you put it. Color settles. Shadows move. Light shifts. Skin changes. You can apply something with intention, but life, heat, time—they’ll move it anyway. And sometimes, the result is softer, truer, more honest than what you planned.
Families are like that. Shapes change. Lines blur. New contours appear. Nothing stays exactly as it was—and ultimately nothing is meant to.
This year, I’ll spend Thanksgiving only with my partner and his family. This will be another shape love can take. I feel the ache of what isn’t happening, and the warmth of what is. Both are true. Both are real. Both deserve to be felt. Nothing stays the same. The real beauty is in acceptance and how we learn to meet what changes—together, even if we’re not all in the same room anymore.