Growing Pains (2026 Edit)

Hello and welcome or welcome back to another stormy night in the shire! I hope alls well that ends well. We’re back for another dive into the archives. Today’s post is from 2021, and let’s go ahead and let this be our trigger warning/just a forewarning that this post does discuss spiritual wellness and a pet’s death. Younger Hailey failed to have trigger warnings and such, I wasn’t as honestly I don’t even know. I just wrote a lot of random shit and didn’t think much about those things but here’s your warning. If this post isn’t for you, I completely understand and respect that. As always, protecting your peace and mental health is a priority. So without further adieu, let’s get to it.

P.S. As always the only changes made to the original post are grammar and spelling changes that don’t affect the actual original structure.

July 10, 2021

°When I was a child I spake as a child, understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.° • 1 Corinthians 13:11 KJV

Hello Loves, I hope you are all well and good but I don’t want to bore you with an intro. I want to get right to the topic of choice tonight. I say tonight because I’m writing this in bed on the seventh anniversary of my best friend’s death.

If you’re thinking “wow Hailey that’s dark af right now, what’s up with that” well no denying its dark. But there is more to it. Stay if you dare?

I mentioned that as I am writing this it is the seventh anniversary of my best friend’s death, so to give you further intel on that, the best friend I am referring to was a golden retriever/yellow lab named Buddy who I grew up with. He was a puppy when I was a baby so quite literally we grew up together. He was always there, he was my first dog and though a family pet he felt like he was the only one to ever understand me and as children do I latched onto that and talked to him about everything. He was my best friend and though I had begun to get more animals no bond was or ever has been like his. We were 11 so he was pretty up there in dog years I suppose and he had some health issues for a while, but for the last 3 or 4 days he hadn’t been eating and was constantly sick and it was time. Humanly my best friend’s suffering was put to an end so he could live a pain free life on the other side. I know I know darkness, but there is a meaning for this. Talking about it I mean.

Losing him was just the beginning.

I say losing Buddy was the start because shortly after I lost him the bond formed with the girl. Shortly after that she ended up living with us and our friendship was rocky but there. All during this my symptoms progressively surged? Formed? Showed? My body started turning on me it seemed. For ages no one believed me, I honestly didn’t believe me. Test after test, family meeting after family meeting. New things this way and that. All leading up to who and where I am today.

I was 11.

You all are probably curious as to how that all ties in with the verse that is at the top of this post huh? Well to be completely honest with you this is going to be one of those up for interpretation things but this is where I see it and my thoughts and of course as always feel free to share yours in the comments or by direct message on any of my socials. But here goes, I remember my dad using this verse a lot when he preached and last night it randomly popped into my head and since I was trying to find how to incorporate it into a post. Lately I’ve been in my head a lot and I’ve probably said this before but sometimes that can be good and others not so much. This time I’m leaning more towards it’s a good thing. Why’s that you ask? Well during the time frame I lost Buddy I went through a number of things that began to mature me and shape me into the woman I am becoming today. See lately I’ve been reflecting on these past few years and the things I’ve said, people I’ve hurt, people who’ve hurt me and things that have been said and events that have happened. All of these things they made me. To be completely truthful with you all I was hating pretty heavily on myself the other day but something in me pointed to this verse.

To be exact though it was how much I’ve grown in just the past few years. I look back to things I said and conversations that were had and don’t recognize myself. How could I? Some of these things I’ve written about in the moment and now looking back on the posts I want to do like a second part and show how I’m looking at what I did and what I could have changed and how I’ve grown from it. Which is where this verse came into play. Honestly let’s break this piece off for a second:

“When I was a child I spake as a child.“

The amount of friendships and relationships I cost myself or possibly cost myself because of how stubborn and scared and ignorant I was. It’s redonkulos! As much as they hurt me, I hurt them just as bad if not worse. This is where the full effect of the verse takes place. (I’m just going to paraphrase this verse for the moment but you can always scroll back up for the full verse) When I was a child, I spoke, acted and thought childishness, when I grew up I put all of those things away. A new sight if you will. All of this has been in my mind lately. I look back at all these things I could have done differently but I guess what I’m getting at in this post is that you can’t change the past. I can’t change my past BUT we can change our future. We can work on ourselves and our mindset and how we think, feel and act and then bam one day we’re all grown up. We will never be perfect, we are still going to slip up and do things, hurt people and generally be human but we can be better. We can grow ourselves. When we make a mistake, we strive to learn from it and not do it again. I have this fitness journal that has goals and quotes in it and one of the quotes from it said “the best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today” and that also went with something my father said while preaching a few times. It kinda clashes too but bear with me, I think you’ll get the picture. There is no yesterday only today. What’s past is past because today is technically yesterday and we aren’t promised a tomorrow. And if you think about it tomorrow ends up being today.

So to sum it all up? Learn from it, grow from it. Be better than you were. Be happier than you were and by you I mean we and I. Because guys these last years I’ve been someone I’m not proud of but I’m becoming someone to be proud of and my hope is that you can all do the same. Another thing is that I outgrew a lot of people and I didn’t realize that until after I had said and done things I now regret. It’s okay and normal to outgrow people, places and things, in fact you should want that. I didn’t understand that for a while. In a way this is an apology to those? But mostly an apology to myself. For not realizing that I needed to leave before the damage was done, for not leaving when my gut and heart told me too. For not leaving sooner. I’m sorry for not staying away when I was already gone. I’m sorry for being selfish and wanting to give it a second shot or third or millionth because I wanted it to work, I wanted it to not be over. I thought change and growing was a bad thing BUT it isn’t. If it all went bad I pray we both grew positively from it. If we just grew apart I pray we learned something from one another. When all is said and done maybe you’re not meant to be in their whole book but just a chapter or two but some characters though brief are forever imprinted.

All of that being said I hope this at least makes some sense to you all and doesn’t just sound like a pointless rambling because to me it’s another entry into my life.

As always I love you all and as always I’ll see you next time!

💕Hailey

Present Day – 2026

I think what younger Hailey was trying to say is that this verse encapsulates growing up perfectly. It shows true humanity. And while I may not have fully understood it at the time – that’s a normal part of growing up. 

This was such a huge reason why I wanted to do this series, where we reviewed the older posts from when I was younger. Because as you get older you find yourself and your voice and your views opinions and things change. Or you just shape them, shaping who you are. I’m not the same person I was at eleven but I’m also not the same person I was when I wrote this post. This is part of the reason I love that Taylor Swift quote so much – I know someone’s going to make a game where we tally every time Taylor Swift is mentioned one day! But anyway this quote:

“Part of growing up is realizing that that you’ll never change, but you’ll never stay the same either” 

Or the more commonly referenced version.

“I think it’s important that you know that I will never change. But I’ll never stay the same either. Must be a Sagittarius thing.”

I have to quickly give credit to the credit user who did stunning sleuthing to find these quotes and where they came from for someone who asked on Reddit. So to that person if you ever somehow come across my posts you saved my ass. Also like truly amazing work with finding the interview in which the first quote came from (2010 MTV) and the second one came from Taylor’s bio on her site in 2010? I wouldn’t even begin to know how to find such information so you’re a real one for that. Okay back to my post. 

To make a long story shorter, this post could have been written smoother. I should have had some warnings. But it shows yet again the evolution of me as a writer and a person and in a way it kind of shows where the idea for this series was a seed. Overall thechronicalesofhails is forever going to evolve and go through eras. But I think looking back at its beginning era is one of the most fascinating to me, as I can see where I was struggling to find my footing as someone who went from being so deep into religion and christianity being in a box as a therapist once said as we spoke about how I was feeling. She was right. I was trying to put God in a box and that’s a topic for another day. But you can see the shift to someone who isn’t in that box, who isn’t conforming though still trying to find their path. Hopefully that makes sense. 

When I first looked to redo this post, I had written a whole paragraph which isn’t making the final cut but I will sum it up because I think it’s important to add. The reason this post wasn’t out sooner was because reading it sent me into a spiral, it triggered me. I could see the child I was fighting with the woman I was becoming. It wasn’t until a similar conversation came about with someone I hold dearly, I realized I was finally ready to write this. 

The post was never just about the death of my lifelong friend or how his death was just the beginning. It was about so much more. A story of growing up, of “losing your way” according to the world around you, and finding your voice. That’s what I see. And I see it as the woman who that little girl that I was needed in her life at that time.

With all that being said I hope you all enjoyed this one, if you did, leave a like and comment if you feel like it? Also if you haven’t yet, please subscribe as we’re trying to reach 50 subscribers on the site by the end of the year. Only if you want too : ) I will catch you all in the next one!

As always stay safe, love hard, and protect your peace ❤

Xoxo Hails