People sometimes smile when they hear me say that I had thirty husbands.
The truth is, I only had one husband. His name was Yumi.
And over the course of our life together, I came to realize that I had loved many different versions of him.
Every time Yumi grew, changed, opened, healed, discovered something new about himself, or stepped into a larger version of who he was becoming, I found myself meeting a new man…a new husband.
At some point, I began a simple ritual.
I would say goodbye to the man he had been and I would say hello to the man he was becoming.
The first time I consciously counted one of my “new husbands” was during a trip to South Africa.
Yumi was standing by the ocean, reflecting on life when he turned to me and said something that surprised me.
This brilliant scientist, who had spent much of his life valuing what could be measured and understood, suddenly said:
“Not everything can be measured. Not everything can be diagnosed. Some things simply touch the soul.”
In that moment, I realized something had shifted and a new dimension of him had emerged.
I looked at him and thought, “This is a new husband.”
And so I began counting. It wasn’t because he became a different person, but because he kept becoming more fully himself.
I think many relationships struggle because we continue relating to a version of someone that no longer exists.
We hold on to who they were. We expect them to remain familiar. We resist the changes that naturally come with a life fully lived.
Yet growth asks something different of us. It asks us to say goodbye. Again and again.
Not goodbye to the person but to the version of them we thought we knew.
And when we do, we can say hello to who they are now.
This practice became especially meaningful later in Yumi’s life when he was diagnosed with cognitive impairment.
It was at that time that his words gradually disappeared and the man who had always expressed himself through language no longer communicated in the same way.
Many people saw loss. And there was loss, but there was also something else.
There was still Yumi.
His eyes. His gestures. His presence. His essence, which proved to me that no matter what else happens, a person’s essence is always the same.
So I said goodbye to husband number twenty-nine, the one who spoke with words.
And I said hello to husband number thirty.
Because he was still here. He was different, yes, but fully, fully himself.
That decision allowed me to continue meeting him, loving him, and to continue experiencing him as my lifelong thou.
Perhaps one of the great invitations of relationship is not simply to love another person.
Perhaps it is to keep discovering them, to keep greeting the person they are becoming, and to keep saying hello.