There comes a point after profound loss when you realise you are not who you were before ‘that’ event. And strangely, that can be both confronting and liberating.
For many women over 50, life transitions can shake the very foundations of identity. Divorce. Empty nest. Career change. Loss of a parent. A relationship ending. Retirement. Grief. In my case – a significant traumatic event as was the bushfire.
After the fire (AF), I began to see my life through a completely different lens. For the first few months, I was simply surviving. Processing what had happened. Grieving what I’d lost. Trying to make sense of a world that suddenly looked very different. And if you’ve been following along, that won’t be any surprise to you.
But something else was happening beneath the surface. My brain was changing too.
Your brain can rewire
Neuroscience tells us that the brain is capable of change throughout our lives. Our experiences, thoughts, behaviours and environment can influence the neural pathways we strengthen over time. Following trauma and major life disruption, the brain can become highly focused on safety, threat and survival. But as we begin to feel safer and process what has happened, we can also create new patterns, perspectives and possibilities.
For me, that rewiring wasn’t about returning back to the woman I was before the fire. It was about discovering who I chose to become next. And that meant getting very deliberate. I started choosing differently.
I chose to remove certain people from my inner circle because I realised that not everyone deserved access to the woman I was becoming. I chose a different career because my definition of success had changed. I chose a different car because, yes, apparently even your car can become part of your identity reset (especially if 2 of them burned to the ground).
But none of these decisions were random. They were conscious. They were deliberate. They were on purpose.
I began asking myself a different question:
“Does this belong in the life I am creating now?”
Rather than automatically carrying people, possessions, beliefs, expectations and old versions of myself forward, I started choosing what stayed. I mean some things couldn’t stay anymore anyway – they burned.
I also deliberately started choosing what didn’t stay.
This is the part nobody tells you!
Reinvention doesn’t happen overnight. There is no magical morning when you wake up and suddenly have everything figured out. For me, it has taken around six months to really know, accept and embrace the new and improved version of myself.
Six months of processing. Six months of questioning. Six months of allowing myself to grieve who I had been, grieve all of the losses while becoming curious about who I could be, what I could do, what impact I could have.
And eventually, something shifted. I started embracing life again. Not the life I had before.
This life now.
I became excited about what the future might hold. I became more purpose-driven. More intentional. More discerning about where I invested my energy, my time and my relationships. And perhaps most importantly, I stopped trying to get back to the old me.
I realised I could take everything I loved about her with me while still becoming someone new.
You are not lost!
If you’re navigating trauma, grief or a major life transition right now, you may feel like you’ve lost yourself. You haven’t. You may simply be in the middle of rebuilding your identity. And that is a process that will take as long as it will take.
Your brain is adapting. Your perspective is evolving. Your priorities are changing. Your nervous system is learning what safety looks like again. You can remember who you were. You can honour everything you’ve survived. You can grieve what you’ve lost. And you can still step into the best version of yourself yet.
You don’t need to become who you used to be. You’ve outgrown her. You get to decide who you become next.
Because sometimes the greatest version of you isn’t behind you. She’s the woman you’re deliberately now stepping into and that is cool beyond words.
Image: ChatGPT