You can outgrow a place without trashing it. Shoes that don’t fit anymore still got you here.

Leaving something tempts you to build a case against it, because that makes the leaving feel justified. A place can stop fitting without ever having been bad, and rewriting it as bad costs you the good years that happened there. Outgrowing is a question of size, not of blame.

If you are on your way out of a town, a job or a group, keep your account of it accurate. Name what it gave you alongside what it cannot give you now. You will want that version later, and so will the people still standing in it.