Who Are You Now? Redefining Yourself Through Life’s Shifts
Whether it’s a career pivot, a move, a birth, a death, every major shift invites an identity reset. Why? Because it’s not just about what’s changing; it’s about who you’re becoming through it.
Research shows that most of us reinvent ourselves several times over the course of a lifetime. I’ve done my fair share of shapeshifting: from marketing director to grad student, coach, and writer . . . from married to divorced, single and then happily partnered again . . . from living in DC most of my life to full-time global nomad and, now, newly settled Blue Ridge mountain momma.
And that’s not even getting into the deeper transformations: navigating a series of significant losses, a massive Dark Night of the Soul, 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 job, address, mate, or chapter. It’s about learning how to meet life’s constant movement with a little more trust, grace, and flow.
As one of my favorite philosophers, Alan Watts, reminds us, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
Suffering begins when we cling to fixed identities and try to stay solid in a world that is inherently fluid. But when we loosen our grip on who we think we’re supposed to be, something softens. Old boundaries dissolve. Possibility shows up. And we discover a way of being that is wider, truer, and more alive.
Why Transitions Can Feel So Overwhelming
Some changes arrive by choice: following a new calling or finally saying yes to something you’ve resisted for a long time. Others come crashing in unexpectedly: a layoff, a health crisis, a loss that changes everything.
Whatever your transition is about, it’s going to stir up identity disorientation. You’re walking away from an entire 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, things may feel messy while you sort it all out.
Psychologist Herminia Ibarra describes identity transition as the process of letting go of one version of yourself while experimenting with new possible selves, eventually integrating the latest 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 shifting times, you’re being invited to Align with what’s true for you now, Release what no longer fits, and Create your next chapter 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 still feels true, and what wants to emerge.
To me, this is what coaching—and life!—is all about: not just having visions and setting goals, but remembering how to move with life rather than against it. To trust that even when things seem to be falling apart, something deeper is reorganizing beneath the surface. This kind of trust asks us to rewrite the story from “I’m starting over from rock bottom—and how TF am I going to do this?” to “I’m evolving into a fuller expression of myself—and I know discomfort is part of the game.”
When I give myself the grace to approach transitions as flow experiments rather than endpoints, change stops feeling heavy and starts feeling like freedom—the freedom to evolve again and again without losing myself in the process.
So the key, as I see it, is to remember that the mind’s protests to change are just its way of trying to protect. If you can notice the narratives without getting pulled into them, you can simply let them pass through . . . and stay centered in your flow. As they say in yoga, the master isn’t the one who keeps the perfect, uninterrupted pose but the one who knows how to get back into pose after wobbling. No such thing as perfection.
A Few Questions to Reflect On
If you’re in a season of transition, big or small, consider 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, clinging, and force?
The more we try to meet change as part of life’s natural rhythm—not as something to fix, wrestle with, or fight—the more obvious it becomes that the work was never about rebuilding. It was always about remembering who we always were, all along, underneath it all.
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