Growth is hard to measure from the inside, so here is a marker you can check: noticing the faults of who you used to be. Seeing them is the evidence — you only recognise what you have climbed above.

The reverse holds too, and it stings a little. “An inability to recognize your own flaws reveals that you are not yet above them” — still caught up in the old ways, so still unable to see them.

Innocent reads this the way you read weather. A season in a life leaves signs, and when you see them “you know what season you are leaving and what season you are entering.” Letting someone hurt your feelings and learning self-love from it is one sign. Waking up with something you love to do is another. Noticing your old flaws is not self-reproach, then. It is a season changing.