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I take long walks on the weekend as part of my routine for both physical and mental health. My walks allow a moment of clarity and understanding to be found as I reflect on moments past.

While walking on this particular day, I found a puzzle scattered upon the ground with no box to be found. The pieces lay exposed, giving no hint of what the image was or what it was meant to become. Sadly, those scattered pieces are lost—much like I have felt throughout my life.

I have spent a lifetime seeking to find my missing puzzle piece to complete my masterpiece known as life. My existence has been lived for others, unaware of the future that awaited me, and I lost myself in that process.

The truth is, I have never truly known who I am outside the chamber walls that surround me. I am a woman of strength and integrity... but not grace. I am far from graceful, because the woman that exists—she is a woman that exists in your mind, with no reality to speak it as true.

Who am I when the expectations of others fall away? For so long, I have been the pillar—the steady hand, the listening ear, the answer to someone else’s need. I built a life out of duty and endurance, brick by brick, until those very walls became the chamber that hid me from myself. I learned how to survive, how to stand tall, and how to carry heavy loads without breaking. But survival is not the same as living, and strength alone cannot reveal the image on the box.

Looking at those scattered pieces left on the pavement, I realize something fundamental: a puzzle without a box isn't broken—it is simply waiting to be discovered without a map. Perhaps the missing piece was never something outside of me waiting to be found. Perhaps it was the permission to define myself on my own terms.

I may not have grace in the quiet sense, but I have resilience. I have the courage to step beyond the walls, to look at the scattered parts of my past, and to begin placing them together—not to match a picture someone else drew for me, but to finally see the woman who was waiting there all along.

I found a scattered puzzle on the ground with no box—and realized it was a mirror of my entire life.