You are a part of my life, and the journey I have taken… since my early 20s, this story, these characters have been a part of me, and I know the same is true for so many others. Each person has their own life and experiences shaping how they perceive each character, interaction and plot twist. Many of us share certain experiences, and others couldn’t possibly grasp how we read the same words but see completely contradictory imagery. 

I remember the excitement I felt when I heard my favourite books were being made into a TV show. I can’t describe it as anything but overwhelming gratitude. Outlander wouldn’t suffer the same fate as so many great book series, being squished into a movie, but it would be given room to breathe, grow, and, yes, change into something else. 

I never expected the books and show to take the same paths or hold to the pages tightly – so in that, I gave myself a gift. My lack of expectation allowed anything to happen without my disappointment overriding it. Sure, some things I didn’t enjoy, some things I thought could have been done differently; however, that is a bit of life in itself, isn’t it? Not everything in our lives is ever perfect, meets expectations, or is by design. Nor should it be. That drains the colour from the tapestry it is creating.

I know my experience with Outlander, both the books and the show, is unique to me. I have set upon reading the series again, hoping to be through it fully before Diana publishes the 10th and what we believe to be the final book in the Outlander saga, 35 yrs in the making. What I am noticing is how different it is to me now. I don’t experience it in the same way because I am not the same. The nostalgia and the love in those pages still hit me; however, I have more understanding and compassion for characters I used to find vile. Sure, villains be villaining, but these days, I tend to accept the *why* of it all. I find myself understanding how the Geillis’s, Loaghaire’s and Malva’s became who they were rather than judging them for it. I see depth in the shallowness of characters and light in their darkness. I am not sure I see these things because I have 30 more years of experience or because I have started challenging and accepting my own flaws, my own darkness. 

There is a richness and a rage I experience in the re-reading and in the show itself. Perhaps, the richness is from the rage. What I used to excuse as *thats the way it was back then*, I have realised, thats how society might have been, but it wasn’t right, it never was. Looking at society today, knowing that so many things are built on fear and hate, while many of us stand against it, it is still a social norm. It seems silly to think it wasn’t the same back then. Yes, women might have gotten beaten and raped so often it was normalised to a point – but you know who knew it was wrong and horrendous? The women who experienced it and the children who grew up in the homes where it was happening. 

I experienced sexual trauma in my youth, and these books, when I was young, gave me an outlet. It gave me the villains I could throw that repressed, silenced anger into, since conditioning created a silence around my reality. I have done a lot of healing over the last decade, some of it subconsciously through these books and the show’s characters. More of it in a therapist’s office, and much more of it through everyday awareness. Where there is trauma, there needs to be connection; stories connect us to the people we need to heal. 

There is no saying goodbye to something or someone that has become a part of you. Outlander has been a part of me for 30 years. They both unleashed imagination in me, they both helped heal bits that I wasn’t always sure existed. We feel we know the characters, and because of that, we feel a bizarre kind of ownership to our versions of them. Depending on our passion, presence and personality, ownership can seem pretty overwhelming. 

I have watched the final episode, I have cried through it and after it was over. This after-cry is not because it’s over, but because I had the privilege to live in a time when I could see it. I feel so incredibly lucky to have seen Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe embody these characters who only existed in our imaginations. They walked them off of the pages and breathed life into them as only, I believe, they could have. I don’t think it was luck; I believe it was kismet. Whoever they were before they inhabited these characters was exactly what was needed for them to carry them for 12+ years. I don’t think it is possible to play parts like this without connecting to them on a level none of us watching could fully understand. 

For that, I am so grateful. It sounds a bit sadistic to say so because I know that for them to reach the depths they did, they needed to access some very painful parts of themselves. Doing that for their art, I am sure, is also cathartic; however, catharsis also drains us. When people feel that kind of emotion, it also affects them physically and mentally, so I feel incredibly honoured to have witnessed the results of their commitment and understand, maybe, a little of what it cost them.

I can’t say goodbye to something that will never leave me, but I can say *Thank you for being an active part of my life, my journey and my healing.* 

The words thank you seem so small in relation to what I have received, but they will have to do. 

Sher