Finding Your Identity After a Significant Life Change

Life has many twists and turns. And before you know it, you might find yourself in a serious ‘SHIT! I didn’t plan for THIS’ and don’t know what to do. 

Divorce or a breakup. You used to be a wife or girlfriend. Now you aren’t. How do you grapple with the fact that your emergency contact needs to be changed? How do you get used to eating or living alone now that your partner moved out?

Motherhood. You dreamed about having kids and now that you have one, or two, or three.. You miss your old life. You wonder if you made the right decision to have kids in the first place. You find toys in your purse (I’m guilty of this!) and long for the long nights of going out to dinner and having a few glasses of wine. Now you don’t because you know you’ll have to wake up with your kids. Waking up with a headache to a screaming kid isn’t going to work for your new life of having to be ‘on’ all day. 

Job loss or dissatisfaction. You worked your way up the ladder to be at the top of your field. Who are you now that you don’t have a job or one that you don’t love anymore?

Spiritual Awakening. You feel a higher power in a way you never did before. Whether it’s Buddah, God, Allah, or another spiritual connection. Who is this new you that you want to align your life to (so much currently that doesn’t align with it)?

Or Herpes, you just got your groove back after a breakup or divorce and have been dating, only to get Herpes. Now you have to figure that all out again and feel like damaged goods. 

An old trauma has been resurfaced or discovered for the first time. You remember why that creepy uncle was creepy and remember things that you want to forget. It is getting in the way or you being able to completely relax into intimacy with your partner. 

Here’s the good news…. You are still you.

In the middle of things changing in a big way, there is an opening for learning and growing. I know it doesn’t seem like it at the moment, but it’s true.  In case you forgot, if you’re reading this and lived through a major life transition, I want you to write down the transition and 2 things that you learned from it. Next, write down where it led you and how it changed you. 

The fact of the matter is, we have control of only what we can control. You don’t have control over anyone else, so whatever choices they make that impact you, you don’t have control of. You do, however, have control over what you do with the way the situation impacts you. 

I am constantly amazed at how resilient people are. I want you to think of a person in your life that you admire the most. I want you to think of why you admire them. Is it because everything was easy for them? Is it because they got through something really hard and figured it out?  Feel free to comment on this blog or send me a message and let me know. I guarantee if that person went through a hard time, you didn’t necessarily see all aspects of that part. Or maybe you saw glimmers or the glow up afterwards. I am willing to bet money that their identity was wrapped up in that difficult time and they had to fight really hard to come back into a new version of themselves. 

It takes work to change feeling like you were dumped to feeling like your divorce taught you a lot about yourself. It takes a lot of work to change your perspective from losing your life when you had children to learning to take care of yourself while being a mom. It takes a lot of work to change your perspective from trauma ruining everything in your life to become resilient despite sometimes being reminded of the trauma. You can own what you’ve been through and use it to make you a better version of yourself. 

Right now you are not the same version of yourself you will be in five to ten years. The essence is you, but who you are and how you’ve persisted through what you’ve been through will always be yours to keep. 

So make it a good version of you.