Some Parts of Me Came from You, Reflected Through Others

Someone once pointed out something about me that I had never noticed. It was a small comment, the kind that could easily have passed without a second thought. But I kept returning to it. I wondered how someone else had seen something in me that I had never quite seen in myself.

I had always thought of knowing myself as something I did alone. I could look back on my memories, think about the choices I had made, and try to understand why I was the way I was. But that conversation left me wondering how much of what I know about myself has actually come from other people.

There are things we don't notice until someone names them. A habit we have picked up without realizing it. A particular expression that appears when we're excited. The way we tell a story, the way we listen, or the way we react when something doesn't go as planned. Sometimes, the people closest to us recognize these things long before we do.

And sometimes, they recognize something deeper. They see a kind of courage in us that we have mistaken for stubbornness, or a tenderness we have learned to hide so well that we no longer know it's there. They remember a version of us we have forgotten, or introduce us to a possibility we hadn't considered.

The People Who Leave Small Traces

I think about the people who have left small traces in the way I live. Someone who taught me to pay attention to details. Someone whose way of telling stories changed how I remember my own. Someone who made me feel comfortable enough to say something I had kept to myself for years. Someone I disagreed with, but whose questions stayed with me long after the conversation ended.

Not all these encounters were easy, and not all of them lasted. Some people have been part of my life for years; others appeared briefly and left before I understood what their presence had changed. But I can sometimes recognize them in the smallest things: a phrase I find myself repeating, a habit I didn't have before, a way of looking at something that now feels entirely my own.

Perhaps this is one of the strange things about becoming ourselves. We spend so much time trying to understand what makes us different, the things that belong uniquely to us, that we forget how much of a person is formed in relation to others. We learn what we like and what we resist. We discover where our boundaries are, what we are willing to change, and what we want to hold on to. We become more familiar with ourselves through the people who make us feel understood, as well as through those who show us where understanding ends.

Even the things we eventually call our own may have begun somewhere else. A way of making tea, a favorite expression, the colors we are drawn to, or the stories we choose to tell. We may have inherited them from family, picked them up from friends, or encountered them in someone we met only once. Over time, these borrowed things settle into our lives. We forget where they came from, and they become part of the way we recognize ourselves.

I sometimes wonder whether the people who have shaped me can still recognize themselves in me. Would they notice the little things I learned from them? Would they hear a familiar phrase in the middle of a conversation, or recognize their influence in a choice I make without thinking? Perhaps they would be surprised. Perhaps they would never notice at all.

There is something comforting about the thought that our relationships don't end neatly at the point where our paths separate. We continue carrying pieces of the people we have known, not as exact copies of them, but as parts that have changed meaning through being lived with. What we receive from someone becomes something different when it passes through our own experiences. We add to it, question it, sometimes let parts of it go, and sometimes discover its meaning years later.

Jewelry That Holds Traces of Other People

I think this is also why certain objects can feel so personal. A piece of jewelry might remind us of the person who gave it to us, but it can also come to represent something less obvious: a period of our lives, a relationship that changed us, or a quality we learned to recognize in ourselves because someone else recognized it first. Even a piece we choose for ourselves can hold traces of other people, familiar forms, remembered gestures, or something we once saw and never quite forgot.

The Twine ring in these photos is that kind of piece for me, a sculptural band that holds shapes I recognize and cannot fully explain.

Where Reflected Through Others Began

At Rawa, I return to the idea of reflection not as a perfect image of who we are, but as something that changes depending on where we stand and whom we are standing beside. The people in our lives don't simply show us who we already are. Sometimes, they bring forward parts of us that might have remained unnoticed. Sometimes, they change the way we see ourselves. And sometimes, they leave us with questions that take years to answer.

The collection Reflected Through Others grew from this thought: that identity is never entirely solitary. We are shaped by the people we love, the people we learn from, the people we resist, and the people who see something in us that we haven't yet found the words for. Their presence becomes part of our own story, even when the story changes and we begin to tell it differently. That is why I keep coming back to this idea: some parts of me came from you, reflected through others.

I still think about that small comment someone once made about me. I can't remember every word of the conversation, but I remember the feeling of looking at myself from a slightly different angle. It was as if someone had held up a mirror I hadn't known I needed.

Since then, I've wondered how many parts of me began as something someone else noticed, offered, or made room for. How many things I carry without knowing their origins. How many people have become part of the person I am, quietly and without asking to be remembered.

Maybe knowing ourselves isn't always a matter of looking inward. Sometimes, it begins with looking at the people around us, and recognizing what has passed between us.

Some parts of me came from you. And by now, they have become part of a person you may not even recognize as your own reflection.