Who Are You Now? Redefining Yourself Through Life’s Shifts
Whether it’s a career pivot, a move, the end of a relationship, welcoming a new family member, or a loss that rearranges your world, every major shift invites an identity reset. It’s not just about what’s changing; it’s about who you’re becoming through it.
Research shows that most of us will reinvent ourselves several times over the course of a lifetime. I’ve done my share of shapeshifting: marketing director to grad student to coach, writer, from DC-area native to full-time digital nomad (6+ years). . . to settled Blue Ridge mountain momma. And that’s not even getting into the deeper transformations: moving beyond the beliefs of my childhood religion, navigating loss, a massive Dark Night of the Soul, divorce, and radically expanding how I understand reality, purpose, and consciousness.
If you’re going through your own life pivots—or you’ve ever gone through them (and, really, who hasn’t?)—you know: it’s never just about the new title, new address, or new chapter. It’s about who you’re becoming and how to meet life’s constant movement with a little more trust, fun, and flow.
As my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, reminds us, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” Watts believed that our suffering tends to come from clinging to fixed identities—from trying to stay solid when life, and the self, are meant to be fluid. When we loosen our grip on who we think we are or supposed to be, we dissolve old boundaries, open to new possibilities, and potentially discover something larger, freer, and more true.
Why Transitions Can Feel So Overwhelming
Some changes arrive by choice: following a new calling, craving more alignment, or finally saying yes to something you’ve resisted for a long time. Other changes come crashing in unexpectedly: a layoff, a health crisis, a parent who needs care, a relationship that ends, or a loss that changes everything.
Whatever your transition is about, it’s going to stir up identity disorientation. You’re walking away from an ecosystem that quietly told you who you were—routines, relationships, and physical spaces—all of it formed the scaffolding of your identity. When that structure shifts, you’re going to feel unmoored. Things will get messy, a little bit, or a lot, while you find your footing again.
Psychologist Herminia Ibarra describes identity transition as the process of letting go of one version of yourself while experimenting with new possible selves and eventually integrating the next version of yourself until that version becomes the new normal.
This is the heart of what I call the ARC Blueprint — Align, Release, Create. When you’re in shift times, you’re being invited to Align with what’s true now, Release what no longer fits, and Create from a more authentic center.
How Coaching (and Self-Awareness) Can Help
Whether it’s formal coaching or deep self-reflection, the real work happens in that liminal space—between Who I was and Who am I now? This is where we begin to honor all the parts: what’s being let go, what we’re grieving, what still feels true, and what wants to emerge.
To me, this is what coaching is really about: not just setting goals, but remembering how to move with life rather than against it. To know that even when things seem to be falling apart, something deeper is quietly reorganizing beneath the surface.
It’s about rewriting the story from “I’m starting over from rock bottom—this is f*ing overwhelming” to “I’m evolving into a fuller expression of myself—and it’s an opportunity.” (And let’s be clear: this isn’t about slapping on a fake happy face. Transitions aren’t easy. It does no one any good to pretend otherwise.)
But if we can start to see transitions as Flow experiments instead of endpoints change stops feeling so heavy and starts feeling like freedom. The freedom to evolve, again and again, without losing ourselves in the process.
A Few Questions to Reflect On
If you’re in a season of transition, big or small, consider exploring these questions:
What truth are you being invited to Align with right now?
What identities, roles, or stories are you ready to Release?
What new ways of living, creating, or relating want to be Created through you?
What parts of your old life still feel like you and deserve to come along?
What parts of the “old you” are you ready to let go of?
Where in this process can you allow a little more trust, play, and flow and a little less worry and force?
Something I’ve learned through hard-earned experience? The more I meet change as part of life’s natural rhythm, not as something to fix, wrestle with, or fight, the more I see the work was never about rebuilding. It was always about remembering who I am—who I always was, all along—underneath it all.
