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As we get older, it's easy to settle into a routine. Honestly, why wouldn't we? Much of our lives are built around them.
We get up at the same time. We go to the same job. We take care of the same people. We fill the same roles day after day, year after year. Before long, those routines become part of how we see ourselves.
But then life changes.
The kids leave for college. Retirement arrives. Someone we love dies. Sometimes the change is dramatic. Sometimes it's something quieter. Either way, we're suddenly faced with a question we may not have asked ourselves in years:
Who am I now?
When we've spent decades being one thing — mother, caregiver, spouse, employee, business owner — it isn't always easy to imagine ourselves as something else. We become comfortable in those identities. They give us purpose and structure. Letting go of them, even when we're ready for a new chapter, can feel unsettling.
I've been wrestling with that myself.
Three years ago, my husband and I left behind almost everything familiar — our home, our jobs, our friends and the life we had built.
Looking back, I can see that decision didn't happen overnight.
Most of my life had been spent moving forward on a fairly defined path. I was raising children, building a career, taking care of family, meeting deadlines and handling responsibilities. There wasn't much time to think about who I might become because I was busy being who I already was.
Then one day, after a summer vacation spent with my sister, mom and family, I found myself in the emergency room with a super high blood pressure reading and tingling on the right side of my body.
Thankfully, I wasn't having a stroke.
But it came after months of working 18-hour days, seven days a week, with no change in sight. I was done. I didn't want to die on the job, and more importantly, I didn't want to keep living thousands of miles away from family, spending thousands of dollars to visit them for three weeks out of the year.
It made absolutely no sense anymore.
As much as I knew I would miss home and the wonderful friends I had there, I knew something had to change. Thankfully, my husband felt the same way.
At the time, I was focused on getting through the transition. It wasn't until this past year that I began to look beyond what I had left behind and consider what might come next.
For the first time, I started to see what was behind the curtain.
Not answers, exactly. Possibilities.
The cookbook I had talked about for years suddenly felt achievable. New projects no longer seemed like ideas for "someday." For the first time, I could actually picture myself doing them.
Now, some of those daily responsibilities have changed. The roles are still part of me, but they no longer define every hour of every day. That leaves space — a little uncomfortable at first — for new questions.
What do I want to learn?
What do I want to create?
What do I still want to accomplish?
Right now, my answers are fairly simple. I'm recovering from knee replacement surgery. I'm finishing my cookbook. I'm continuing this column. And I'm working on a new project that excites me and scares me in equal measure.
Some days that list feels exciting.
Other days it feels uncertain.
I suspect that's normal.
The challenge isn't usually coming up with ideas. Most of us have ideas. The challenge is moving from imagining something to actually doing it. It's one thing to say you'd like to start a business, write a book, volunteer, travel or learn a new skill. It's another thing entirely to begin taking steps toward it.
That's where things start to become real.
You begin researching. You ask questions. You look things up online. You visit websites. You talk to people who have done it before. What once felt like a distant possibility starts to feel achievable.
The funny thing is that the more action you take, the more clearly you begin to see yourself.
You stop seeing yourself only through the lens of who you've been and start recognizing who you're becoming.
Maybe that's one of the gifts of getting older.
Not that we suddenly have everything figured out, but that we're finally given the opportunity to explore parts of ourselves that have been waiting patiently in the wings.
Sometimes seeing yourself in a new light isn't about becoming someone different.
It's about realizing there is still more of you left to discover.
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