Reinvention
It’s been over 10 years since I got a pop record deal and it’s almost been 10 years since my last national tour ended. And do you know what I’m still struggling with to this day?
The feeling that I disappointed everyone when I stopped pursuing that career.
For the immediate years following that decision I got really good at giving succinct answers to questions like “Why did you stop?” Or “What happened?” Or “Are you ever going to try again?” I say answerS (plural) because it was complicated. It was a mix of a lot of things. We can go over more about that at a later date, but honestly, why I stopped is not what plagues me today. Ever since, I have lived many lives, I guess you could say. I have been a staff songwriter, a novelist, a real estate agent, a wife in my first marriage, a divorcee, a yoga teacher and now a new wife with a renewed purpose: helping women like me find their worth and true selves in the wake of something as life-obliterating as a divorce or a break up.
For some reason, every time I reinvent myself, I am so embarrassed by it. Like crippled by it. And it always seems to go back to that first change from pop singer to not pop singer. But that’s dumb, isn’t it because reinventing is hard. It takes courage from within, especially when you hear rumblings and whispers from others who are echoing your fear that you look like you just can’t make anything stick. It takes resolve. And it takes belief that what you’re pursuing is truly what you want. Now, I can tell you I didn’t feel the same passion and calling to every job I took on. And that’s ok. Sometimes you do a job you don’t feel perfectly aligned with. (We have these pesky little things called bills.)
But after all I have been through, the lives and ups and downs both personally and professionally, I am done being embarrassed. I am done apologizing passively by not showing for myself and what I am good at. Most importantly, I am done not showing up for the women I want to help.
So here I go: I am meant to be a coach, a lifter-upper, and a fellow-sufferer along with women who have gone through and are going through the hardest times of their personal lives, whether it be relationship-based or self-based. I am meant to sit with, talk with, support, love on, hope and dream with these women who have way more power than they think. These women will change the world one day. And I want to be a part of their self-discovery journey and see it through until the day they see themselves the way I do: Strong, resilient, worthy, beautiful, and willing to reinvent even if it is embarrassing some days.
I challenge you to challenge the voice in your head today.