Using July’s theme of freedom, I want to delve into what happens when by intention or circumstance we need to reinvent ourselves.
Reinvention often comes due to one of many reasons — divorce, empty nest, job loss, death of a loved one. We’re left standing in this transitional moment wondering who we are without the roles that once defined us. This is when the question becomes crucial: What would the woman I’m becoming do in this situation?
Not the woman I was. Not the woman others expect me to be. The woman I’m actively choosing to become.
We have visions of who we might become, but we won’t know what fits until we try it on. For me, this meant experimenting with boldness I’d never allowed myself. It meant trying on leadership in spaces where I’d previously made myself small. It meant testing my voice in conversations where I’d once stayed silent.
Some experiments failed beautifully. I tried on ‘personas’ that didn’t fit, made choices that taught me what I didn’t want, said yes to opportunities that showed me my boundaries. But each “wrong” choice brought me closer to understanding what felt authentically right.
The truth about transformation is this: women deserve to be in spaces even when they or their lives are not perfect. We don’t have to wait until we’ve figured everything out to claim our seat at the table.
Sometimes we bring our own chair to that table. Sometimes, if there’s no table, we bring that too.
This is what intentional identity creation looks like—not waiting for permission to become who we’re meant to be, but actively building that identity through our choices, our presence, and our refusal to accept less than we deserve.
Each major transition in my life required me to ask: Who do I want to be in this new chapter? Then came the harder part: having the courage to try on that identity, even when it felt foreign, even when others questioned the change, even when I wasn’t sure it would fit.
When I became a single working mother, I tried on fierce independence. When I became an empty-nester, I experimented with putting myself first. When I moved across the country, I practiced starting over with intention rather than just surviving change.
Not every identity I tried on became permanent, but each one taught me something essential about who I am and who I’m becoming.
If you’re standing in the ashes of a major life change right now, consider this your invitation to explore possibility. What would the empowered version of yourself do? How would she handle this transition? What would she choose?
You don’t have to know the answers before you start trying. You just have to be willing to experiment, to see what fits, to keep what serves you and leave what doesn’t.
Because freedom—that active, daily choice I wrote about in July—includes the freedom to reinvent yourself as many times as necessary until you find the identity that makes you feel like the woman you’ve always been meant to be.
Your future self is waiting. And you deserve to try on every version of yourself until you find the one that makes you both look and feel exactly as you’ve imagined.
What new version of yourself is waiting for you?
