Who Am I if I’m not. . . this anymore?
A long-time student of mine, Linda Beth, retired this year.
Linda Beth’s art journal page of a giant wave overtaking her.
Not exactly because she wanted to.
She loved her work as a school psychologist. She'd come to it later in life and had worked hard to build a career she was proud of. Financially, it made sense to retire when she did.
Emotionally, she wasn't ready.
Week after week she’d come to our sessions with her art journal full of pages exploring her struggles. A tornado, tsunami wave, and a mountain emerged from paint and collage, expressing her fears about what lay ahead in this new chapter.
As we reflected on her work it might've sounded like we were talking about retirement, but really we kept returning to the same question: "How will I navigate this new chapter if I'm not even sure who I am anymore?"
I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
Not because everyone reading this is retiring. But no one really talks about what happens when the identities we've carried for decades begin to shift.
Some are even disappearing.
For some of us, it’s a career that’s come to a close. For others, kids have left home and no longer need us in the same way. Or a relationship that’s ending after years of feeling like an untended garden. Or finding ourselves parenting our parents—a job we never wanted. There is a lot of friction and loss in all of that.
After decades of being defined by what we did for others, we quietly, finally, start asking not only Who will I be? but How will I be in the world when I'm no longer __________?
I've spent years sitting with women in this tender place—in my studio, on retreats, and in coaching sessions—and over time I've become convinced of one thing:
Reinventing yourself isn't about becoming someone new. It's about getting quiet enough to hear the woman you've been all along.
You don't need someone else to hand you the answers. You need enough quiet to hear your own.
This year I've been working hard creating something with exactly that in mind, the Create Brave Collective.
A place for women* to gather, make art, ask hard questions, be witnessed, and create enough quiet to hear themselves again.
If you’re curious, I invite you to check out all the details here.
I have a feeling some of you have been waiting for this as long as I have.
