The Art of Unbecoming: A Witty and Heartfelt Guide to Navigating Life’s Messy Changes

There’s a moment in every good story, right before things get interesting, where the main character is staring at their life and thinking, “Well, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.” Maybe they’re holding a wilting houseplant, a defunct life plan, or a job title that suddenly feels like a costume. It’s the quiet, unnerving hum of a life that fits, but doesn’t feel right.

If you’ve ever had a moment like that (a sudden, clear-eyed glimpse of the gap between the life you’re living and the one you secretly long for), you’re in the right place.

This is a guide for anyone who has ever felt the strange, unsettling, and secretly thrilling pull to unravel a life they worked so hard to build. It’s about the messy, beautiful, and often funny journey of unbecoming who you thought you were supposed to be to make room for the person you’re meant to become. We’re here to talk about how to reinvent yourself, even when you don’t have a map, a plan, or a clue where to start. It’s for the moments when the only thing you know for sure is that you can’t keep going like this.

So, grab a cup of tea (or something stronger), get comfortable, and let’s talk about the glorious, terrifying, and necessary art of falling apart and putting yourself back together in a way that finally feels like you.

Chapter 1: The Telltale Sign of a Dead Houseplant (And Other Whispers It’s Time for a Change)

It often starts with something small, something you can almost ignore. A prized fern that, despite your best efforts, has given up the ghost. Or maybe it’s the realization that you’ve been wearing the same three outfits on a loop for months, not because you love them, but because they require zero thought. These aren’t just random occurrences or a sign you lack a green thumb. They’re whispers from the universe that something is out of alignment.

Feeling lost in your 30s, 40s, or any age, really, isn’t about a lack of direction. It’s about outgrowing the directions you were given. It’s the slow, creeping realization that the ladder you’ve been climbing is propped against the wrong wall entirely. The life you built may be perfectly fine on paper, but “fine” has started to feel like a cage.

This is the Comfort Trap. It’s a life that looks good from the outside. You have the job, the routine, the responsibilities. You’ve checked all the boxes society handed you. But inside, there’s a persistent, low-grade hum of dissatisfaction. It’s the feeling of being a tourist in your own life, taking pictures of landmarks you don’t remember choosing to visit. The truth is, learning how to reinvent yourself often begins with admitting that the life you have isn’t the life you want, even if you can’t articulate why.

Here are a few other whispers you might recognize:

A sudden, intense jealousy of people starting new things. You find yourself scrolling through photos of a friend’s disastrous first attempt at pottery and feeling a pang of envy. It’s not about the pottery. It’s about the courage to be a beginner again, to make something lopsided and ugly and uniquely your own.
The Sunday night dread that’s staging a hostile takeover of your entire weekend. It used to start around 8 p.m. on Sunday. Now it’s creeping into Saturday afternoon. Soon, it’ll be sending you a calendar invite for Friday’s happy hour. This isn’t just weekend blues; it’s a sign that the life you’re returning to on Monday morning is actively draining you.
Losing yourself in elaborate daydreams. You spend your morning meeting mentally redecorating a cottage by the sea you don’t own, or planning the menu for a small-town café you have no intention of opening. It’s your mind’s way of trying on a different life for size, a secret act of rebellion against the life you’re currently wearing.
A weird sense of nostalgia for a past you didn’t even like that much. You find yourself thinking fondly of that terrible apartment you had in your twenties, not because it was great, but because you felt like anything was possible back then. The future was a blank page, not a pre-filled planner.
Your tolerance for small talk has hit an all-time low. You find yourself at a party, listening to someone talk about their kitchen renovation, and all you can think is, “I wonder what would happen if I just started screaming.” It’s a sign that you’re craving a deeper, more authentic connection, and the polite performance of everyday life is becoming unbearable.

Recognizing these signs isn’t an indictment of your life or your choices. It’s not a failure. It’s an invitation. It’s your own personal inciting incident, the call to adventure. It’s your intuition, clearing its throat, and gently (or not so gently) suggesting that it’s time to turn the page.

Chapter 2: Giving Yourself Permission to Be a Messy First Draft

Okay, so you’ve admitted it. The whispers have become a roar. Things need to change. The immediate impulse for anyone who’s spent their life being responsible is to create a plan. A color-coded, five-year plan for a new and improved you, complete with spreadsheets, vision boards, and a 30-day challenge.

We love the ambition, but let’s pause for a moment. Take a deep breath. And put down the label maker.

The journey of unbecoming isn’t a corporate rebranding project. It’s a creative one. And creativity is messy. You are allowed to be a terrible, awkward, messy first draft of your new life. You’re allowed to try a kickboxing class and discover you have the coordination of a newborn giraffe. You’re allowed to sign up for a coding bootcamp and realize you’d rather stare at a blank wall for eight hours. You’re allowed to change your mind, take a step back, question everything, and eat toast for dinner because making a real meal feels too complicated.

We live in a world obsessed with the “after” photo. The triumphant, smiling success story. But we skip over the part in the middle: the messy, uncertain, and deeply human process of getting there. This is the part of the story where the character tries on a bunch of different hats. Some will look ridiculous. Some will be surprisingly comfortable. The point isn’t to find the perfect fit right away. The point is to remember what it feels like to play, to experiment, to be curious without an agenda.

Your internal critic will hate this. It will demand a clear plan. It will ask for the ROI on that online calligraphy course. It will tell you that you’re wasting time. Your job is to thank it for its concern and then politely tell it to take a nap. Productivity is not the goal here. Reconnection is. The first step in learning how to reinvent yourself is to give yourself the grace to not have all the answers.

This is the time for what I call “creative experiments.” Think of them as low-stakes ways to date a new version of yourself, without the pressure of a long-term commitment.

Take a class in something utterly useless. Learn to juggle, or identify birds by their song, or make the perfect French omelet. The goal is not to become an expert, but to remember what it feels like to be a beginner.
Go on a “curiosity date” with yourself. Go to a part of your town you’ve never explored. Visit a weird museum. Sit in a coffee shop you’ve never been to and just people-watch.
Change your routine for a week. Take a different route to work. Eat lunch in a park instead of at your desk. Listen to a genre of music you think you hate. The goal is to shake up the snow globe of your life and see where the flakes land.

These aren’t steps on a ladder to a new life; they are explorations. They are ways of gathering data on what makes you feel alive. Embrace the mess. Embrace the uncertainty. You are not a finished product. You are a work in progress, and that is a beautiful, hopeful, and deeply human thing to be.

Chapter 3: The Fine Art of Letting Go of a Perfectly Good Life Plan

One of the hardest, most surprising parts of starting over is the grief. You’re not just letting go of a job you disliked or a routine that was draining you. You’re letting go of a future you once planned. You’re grieving the life you’re leaving behind, and that’s a complicated process. Even if it wasn’t making you happy, it was familiar. It was a story you knew how to tell at parties.

Letting go of a perfectly good life plan feels like a failure, but it’s actually an act of profound courage. It’s looking at a future that is safe, predictable, and approved by everyone else and saying, “Thank you, but I think I’ll take my chances on something true.”

This process is a lot like cleaning out a closet you’ve been stuffing things into for a decade. You have to pull everything out, dump it on the floor, and look at it honestly.

What do you keep? These are the parts of you that are non-negotiable. Your core values, your ride-or-die friendships, your quirky sense of humor, your love for bad television. These are the things that feel like you, no matter what job title you have.
What do you tailor? These are the things that aren’t a total loss, but they need some adjustments. Maybe you like your industry but not your specific role. Maybe you love your city but not your neighborhood. These are the parts of your life that can be altered to fit the person you are becoming.
What do you donate? These are the identities, beliefs, and obligations you’ve outgrown. The idea that you have to be a certain kind of person to be successful. The need for everyone’s approval. The belief that your self-worth is tied to your productivity. You’re not throwing them away with anger, but with gratitude. You’re letting them go so someone else, the person you used to be, can have them.

This identity crisis is real. When you’ve spent years answering the question “What do you do?” with a specific title, it’s terrifying to suddenly not have a neat answer. “I’m figuring things out” can feel like a confession of failure. But what if we reframed it? What if it was a declaration of possibility? Honor the person you were. She got you this far. She made the best decisions she could with the information she had. She wasn’t wrong; she was just a different character in a different chapter.

Grieving the future you thought you wanted is a crucial part of this process. You might find yourself mourning the corner office you were working toward, or the life in the suburbs you had mapped out. That’s okay. Let yourself feel that loss. It’s the only way to make space for the new, unwritten future that’s waiting for you.

Chapter 4: Finding Your Footing in the In-Between

So, you’ve let go. You’ve embraced the mess. You’ve cleaned out the closet. Now what? This is the part where things can feel a little… wobbly. The old life is gone, but the new one hasn’t quite taken shape yet. You’re floating in the in-between, the liminal space. It’s like the scene in the movie after the big explosion, when everything is quiet and dusty and the hero is just trying to figure out which way is up.

Finding your footing isn’t about giant, heroic leaps. It’s about small, deliberate, and sometimes ridiculously simple steps. It’s about finding the things that feel solid in the midst of uncertainty. We call these your anchors.

An anchor can be anything that connects you to the present moment and to yourself. For example:

Making your bed every morning, even if it’s the only thing you accomplish all day.
A daily ten-minute walk where your only goal is to notice things you haven’t noticed before.
A weekly phone call with that one friend who doesn’t try to fix you, but just listens.
Re-reading a favorite book from your childhood.
Perfecting your recipe for scrambled eggs.

These small anchors are what keep you steady while you’re building your new foundation. They are tiny acts of showing up for yourself. During this phase, it’s also crucial to curate your inputs. Unfollow the social media accounts that make you feel like you’re behind in life. Stop listening to the podcast that preaches a one-size-fits-all solution. Surround yourself with stories, people, and ideas that feel like possibility, not pressure.

This is also the time for what we call “micro-braveries.” These are small acts of courage that slowly build your confidence. It could be saying “no” to something you would have said “yes” to a year ago. It could be going to a movie by yourself. It could be finally trying to make that complicated soup recipe you’ve been saving. Each micro-bravery is a vote for the person you are becoming. Trust that even when you can’t see the path, you are moving forward.

The in-between is uncomfortable. It’s the part of the story where the plot seems to have stalled. But it’s also where the most important work happens. It’s where you learn to sit with uncertainty, to trust your own instincts, and to find your own internal compass. It’s the quiet, fallow field where the seeds of your new life are beginning to germinate, just below the surface.

Chapter 5: Rebuilding with New Bricks (And Better Mortar)

The early stages of unbecoming are about deconstruction. You’re taking apart a life that no longer fits. But eventually, the focus has to shift from taking apart to building up. This is the part of the journey where you stop being a messy first draft and start thinking about the architecture of your new life. It’s where the question changes from “What do I need to let go of?” to “What do I want to build?”

This isn’t about creating another rigid, five-year plan. It’s about making conscious, intentional choices based on the data you’ve gathered from your creative experiments and your time in the in-between. It’s about building a life from the inside out, based on your values, not on external expectations.

Identify Your Core Values: What truly matters to you, when you strip everything else away? Is it creativity? Community? Adventure? Stability? Honesty? Make a list of your top 3-5 values. These are your non-negotiables. They are the foundation upon which you will build everything else. Every decision you make, from what job you take to how you spend your weekends, should be filtered through these values.
Find Your People: The journey of unbecoming can be a lonely one. It often involves outgrowing friendships and relationships that were based on the old version of you. Now is the time to consciously seek out the people who see and support the person you are becoming. These are the friends who aren’t afraid of your mess, who celebrate your micro-braveries, and who don’t ask you for a clear plan. They are the ones who make you feel more like yourself, not less.
Learn to Trust Your Own Voice: For years, you’ve been listening to other people’s voices: your parents, your boss, society, your own internal critic. The process of rebuilding is about learning to turn down the volume on all those other voices and turn up the volume on your own. Your intuition, that quiet, gut feeling you’ve been ignoring for so long, is your most reliable compass. Start listening to it in small ways. What do you really want for dinner? What do you really want to do this weekend? Learning to trust yourself with the small decisions will build the confidence to trust yourself with the big ones.

Rebuilding is a slow, brick-by-brick process. Some days, you will lay a dozen bricks. Some days, you will just sit and stare at the one brick you managed to put in place. Both are progress. You are not just building a new life; you are building a home for your own soul. And that is a construction project worth taking your time on.

Chapter 6: The Art of Integration: Loving the Person You’ve Become

One day, you’ll look up and realize that the wobbliness has subsided. The new life, the one you tentatively sketched out with your messy first drafts and micro-braveries, has started to feel like home. You’ll be in the middle of a normal Tuesday, and you’ll notice that you laugh more freely, that you’re less afraid of the unknown, and that the person looking back at you in the mirror feels a little more like you.

This is the heart of unbecoming. It’s not about arriving at a final, perfect, finished destination. It’s about the ongoing process of shedding the layers that aren’t you and embracing the person who has been there all along. It’s about integrating all the versions of yourself (the hopeful twenty-something, the striving thirty-something, and the person you are today) into a cohesive whole.

You’ll still have moments of doubt. Old insecurities will pop up like uninvited guests. You’ll have days where you feel like you’re back at square one. That’s not a sign that you’ve failed. It’s a sign that you’re human. The difference is that now, you have a compass. You know how to find your anchors. You know how to be your own messy, glorious, first draft.

The goal isn’t to become a new person. It’s to become more of yourself. It’s to finally give yourself the permission you were waiting for someone else to grant. And that is a story worth telling.

The journey of unbecoming is rarely a straight line. It’s a winding, surprising, and deeply personal path. It’s a story of letting go, of starting over, and of finding the courage to build a life that feels, finally and truly, like your own. It’s the greatest creative project you will ever undertake.

Your Story Continues

This guide is a map, but the journey of unbecoming is yours alone to walk. It’s a story of letting go, of starting over, and of finding the courage to build a life that feels, finally and truly, like your own.

If this guide felt like a conversation with a trusted friend, you’ll find that same spirit in my novels. Each book is its own unique journey into the art of unbecoming, exploring the messy, heartfelt, and often funny paths my characters take to find themselves. If you’re looking for a story to curl up with, a companion for your own journey, you can explore them all in my bookshelf.