Unbecoming for Evolution
The courage to release the woman I once was.
I’ve realized something about myself that I no longer try to hide or apologize for. I am constantly unbecoming or dismantling who I once was.
The deepest phase of my unbecoming began the day Garvan left earth, though everything did start to change when he got sick.
When he passed, it wasn’t just the loss of the man I loved and chose over and over again. It was the dissolving of the woman I had been beside him. The identity I carried so effortlessly inside that partnership no longer had a place to stand. The rhythms of our shared life disappeared, and with them, a version of me that had felt certain.
Grief did not simply break my heart, it unraveled me.
And in that unraveling, I began to understand something profound for me.
Sometimes we much unbecome before we can evolve.
The woman I was with him was real. She was devoted. She was anchored in love and shared dreams. She was whole within that chapter. But when the chapter closed, I had to release her too.
Not because she wasn’t worthy.
But because she could not carry me into the next season.
Since his passing, I have been shedding layers I didn’t even know I was wearing. Old beliefs. Old fears. Old roles. The way I defined strength. The way I understood independence. The way I held grief inside my body.
Every challenge that followed; loneliness, rebuilding, navigating motherhood differently, rediscover joy, has been part of this sacred unbecoming.
And what I see now is that our tribulations are not punishments.
They are invitations.
They strip away what no longer aligns. They ask us to release identities that were built in survival. They gently, and sometimes not so gently, separate us from who we were so we can step towards who we are becoming.
Unbecoming is uncomfortable. It feels like loss. It feels like instability. It can feel like you don’t recognize yourself anymore.
But that space, that in between, is holy.
It is where expansion happens.
I no longer cling to old versions of myself out of nostalgia or fear. I thank them. And then I let them rest.
Because we are not here to be perfect in one identity or protect it forever.
We are here to evolve through many.
We are here to grow beyond our former edges.
We are here to allow life to shape us, refine us and stretch us.
And sometimes evolution asks us to release even the most beautiful versions of ourselves, especially the ones born inside great love.
I am not the woman I was.
And that is not betrayal.
It is growth.
It is consciousness.
It is the quiet courage of allowing yourself to unbecome, again and again, so you can rise more aligned each time.
That is why we are here.
To evolve.
To expand.
To become, by first willing to unbecome.
