Richelle Hofer

On healing, memory, and the spiral staircase of life

Today Facebook served up one of those “memories” from years ago.

You know the kind… the photo that pops up in your feed all non-chalant-like and puts your whole life momentarily off kilter.

I sat there staring at it.

Two women smiling at a fundraising event.

One of them was me.

The other was someone who used to be one of my closest friends.

A lot of life has happened since we snapped that selfie. I have made peace with that chapter, but seeing it caught me off guard.

I didn’t feel angry. But it made me realize that some things we think we’ve settled in our hearts still have a way of showing up again.

There was a time when that friendship was real. We shared life together. We watched each other’s kids grow up. We showed up for each other when life got hard.

At the time, I would have told you we were almost like sisters.

But life has a way of rewriting chapters we thought were permanent.

That friendship didn’t survive a very painful season in my life. And seeing that photo reminded me of how much wrestling it took to get through that season while trying not to let it change who I was.

People sometimes talk about forgiveness or trust like it’s some clean, noble decision you make once and then move on from.

That wasn’t my experience.

There were days I was furious.

Days I cried.

Days I argued with myself about whether trusting people was just a good way to get hurt again.

And if I’m being completely honest, there were moments when I didn’t particularly want to be the bigger person.

But somewhere in the middle of all that wrestling, I kept coming back to the same question:

Who do I want to become because of this?

Who do I want to be years from now when the dust settles.

It was so hard and sometimes it seemed a little hopeless. It was so tempting to stay in the hurt. But I didn’t want this story to turn me into someone who walked through life suspicious of everyone.

So I kept bringing myself back.

Over and over.

Seeing that photo reminded me of that whole journey.

But strangely enough, what I felt wasn’t bitterness.

I just felt sad.

Sometimes something you thought you had already made peace with shows up again.

A photo.
A memory.
A conversation you didn’t expect.

And suddenly you’re wrestling with it all over again.

I used to think “moving on” meant leaving something behind — like closing a door and never walking back into that room again.

But life doesn’t really work that way.

Lately I’ve started to think it’s more like walking up a spiral staircase.

You pass the same place more than once as you climb. The same view comes around again and again.

But each time you see it from a slightly higher step.

The place you thought you left behind is still part of the structure … you just experience it differently now.

I think that’s what happened to me today.

Seeing that photo didn’t pull me backward.

It just reminded me of a place I’ve already walked through… and how far I’ve walked since.

So if you ever find yourself wrestling again with something you thought you had already laid to rest, maybe you haven’t gone backward at all.

Maybe you’ve just come around the staircase again — seeing the same place from a slightly different height.

A little older and wiser.
A little more at peace with what once lived there.

Sometimes we wrestle again.

And maybe it’s just part of the climb.