A reflection can confirm a change before you have decided how to describe it.

Change often registers in the body before it reaches language. A glance in a window or a mirror can tell you something has shifted, in posture or expression or the weight of the shoulders, while you still have no sentence for what happened. The evidence arrives first and the account comes later, if it comes at all.

If you catch a version of yourself you do not quite recognise, hold off on explaining it immediately. Give it a few days of noticing, and let the description form from what you keep seeing rather than from the first story that fits.