Reinvention - Permission to Become Someone New
Why reinvention is not only okay — it’s necessary
There’s a belief so many of us quietly carry into motherhood: that we are supposed to stay the same.
That the girl we were in college, the woman we were before marriage, the version of ourselves before motherhood should still be recognizable, present, intact. For me, I felt like the “old” version of myself should honestly be thriving, just with a baby on my hip. Honestly, how naive of me! You would think after years of doing this work, of coaching women, of supporting their individual transformation into motherhood that I would have KNOWN better. But alas, it has taken me a full year to truly understand and embody reinvention.
What I am learning is that we were never meant to remain unchanged!!!! Repeat that to yourself, again, and again, and again until you TRULY believe it!
We are meant to evolve. Full stop!
We are meant to be stretched and softened. To experience, to learn, to unlearn, to be shaped by everything we see, touch, grieve over, grow through, and hold.
Our lives are about becoming.
This is perhaps the greatest lesson my first year of motherhood has taught me.
Motherhood is a shedding — a stripping away of stories, identities, expectations, and layers we didn’t even realize we carried. Ideas about ourselves as women and as mothers that have been bestowed upon us by * others * begin to fade into the distance as the old you confronts the new you.
Not because we were broken or wrong, but because we cannot expand without creating space.
To become the mother, the woman, the friend, the creator, the leader we are meant to be —
we have to release what no longer fits.
We have to welcome the new.
And if that feels unsettling, it’s because change is rarely gentle. Transformation is rarely tidy. Growth often looks like unraveling before it looks like rebuilding. This whole first year for me has felt unsettling in many ways. Maybe because I fought the change as I often do with every other kind of change I ever felt. I didn’t WANT to let go. I liked the person that I spent 35 years creating.
I thought reinvention meant losing myself. And honestly, I was afraid!
But now I see that it’s simply meeting myself again, and again, and again.
Maybe you’ve felt this too. Maybe you’ve looked at your life and thought, “I don’t recognize who I am anymore.”
I now have a new respect for this season. I am realizing this shift, this change, this transformation isn’t something to fear — but something to honor?
What if the goal was never to cling tightly to the old you, but to allow her to be the foundation for who you are becoming?
Here’s what I know now after 365 days of fighting myself:
You don’t have to stay the same!!!!!!
You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to soften, redirect, expand, and evolve. You are allowed to grow out of places and identities that once felt comfortable. You are allowed to recognize that what used to fit — no longer does. And that is OKAY!!!
You are allowed to become someone new.
In fact — you were made for it.
Every season of motherhood, every challenge, every joy, every tear, every birth (literal or metaphorical) is an invitation to transform. Welcome it in!
You can rewrite your story. You can be the woman who chooses growth, even when it is uncomfortable. You can honor the shifts, even when they surprise you.
Because becoming is not about abandoning who you were — it is about carrying her forward, and letting her evolve with you.
So here’s your permission slip:
You don’t have to stay who you used to be.
You get to reinvent.
You get to unfold.
You get to become.
And maybe — just maybe — the truest version of you is the one you have yet to meet.
With gentleness and love,
Hayley