After the Softening: What the fire revealed about love, identity, and building a life that fits

What I didn’t understand until recently was how often I was building inside a story that wasn’t fully mine.

When I transferred from CAL to UCLA, I came home and worked three jobs. No one handed me a blank check and said, Go to school. Buy the car you want. I had been working since I was twelve. If I wanted something, I figured out how to get there.

Clothing was never vanity for me. It was identity. My wardrobe was simple: Levi’s, Ralph Lauren polos, Bass Weejuns, but I wanted it to stand out. I couldn’t afford the jewelry I admired in the fancy boutiques.

So I made it.

Silver beads. Jewel-toned disks. Pieces that existed first in my head and then in my hands.

Every classroom I walked into at UCLA, every stretch of Bruin Walk, every library table, someone would stop me.

“Where did you get that?”

“I made it.”

That small exchange became one of my first real businesses. Alongside a word-of-mouth tutoring practice I built from scratch, it paid for my tuition, my books, my food, my freedom.

I didn’t see it as entrepreneurship then. I saw it as survival. Looking back, I see something else.

I was always a builder.
I built what I needed.
I built what didn’t exist.
I built my way forward.

And I did it well. But underneath all of that building, there was still a habit I couldn’t see. I softened myself to keep things steady. I over-functioned. I filled emotional gaps. I carried weight that didn’t belong to me because somewhere along the way, I learned that harmony was safer than honesty.

The last six years changed everything. It began quietly, in Guerrero Negro. No noise. No internet. Just the rhythm of the waves and the breath of whales surfacing beside our small boat. In that silence, I understood something I had been avoiding:

I could control what I created. I could control how I showed up. But I could not control how others chose to live inside their trauma.

That realization loosened something. The fire accelerated it.

When the physical foundation of our home turned to ash, I expected devastation. What I didn’t expect was clarity. I realized I had been building beautiful structures on top of a cracked emotional foundation.

The house wasn’t the only thing that needed rebuilding. What burned away wasn’t just wood and memory. It was the story that I was responsible for holding everyone together. The belief that shrinking was noble. The illusion that I had to soften my edges to be loved.

What remained was simpler. Strength. And love.

Long marriages are not dramatic. They are layered. Built over decades of shared calendars, aging parents, children, financial strain, and silent endurance. Stability can look like intimacy. Routine can mask distance. For years, I mistook steadiness for limitation. I projected old fears onto the man who had simply been standing beside me.

The fire didn’t create our love. It exposed it.

When everything external fell away, what remained was us. Not fragile. Not cinematic. Just steady.

Choosing myself did not cost me my marriage. It clarified it. When I stopped negotiating with myself, I stopped negotiating with him. And something softened, not in shrinking, but in truth. It also clarified my identity.

After last week’s essay, a reader asked:

“Why was your father’s store called Dennis Light instead of Dennis Licht?”

The easy answer is that it was easier to pronounce. The truer answer is that sometimes we soften what makes us distinct to move more safely through the world. My father did it. So did I.

But being Jewish is not only about inheriting trauma. It is inheriting continuity. Creativity. Survival.

And I no longer feel compelled to dilute any part of that, my name, my voice, my strength, for someone else’s comfort.

I am still a builder. But now I build from alignment instead of obligation. From clarity instead of endurance. From strength instead of softening.

You do not have to shrink to be loved.
You do not have to endure to be worthy.
You are allowed to build from truth.

And if there is anything I hope someone reading this carries with them, it is this: You are allowed to stop building a life that requires you to shrink. You are allowed to choose yourself.

And sometimes, when the unexpected shakes the ground beneath you, what falls away is not your life… but the parts that were never truly yours.

What would shift if you stopped negotiating who you are?

With love and creativity,
Susan

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