Meeting the Woman I Was Always Meant to Be

For the past year or so, I’ve been carrying that unsettling feeling, the one that whispers, “I have nothing left to give… is my time here over, or simply shifting?”

There are seasons in life when you wake up and realize you’ve been running on fumes for too long. Not because you don’t care or because you’re done with this life, but because something inside you has quietly emptied. That emptiness can feel like a collapse, but I’m learning it’s something entirely different.

Maybe it’s not an ending but more of a transition…a recalibration disguised as exhaustion, a shedding that appears as unraveling but is actually rewiring and rearranging.

Sometimes, the real question I should be asking isn’t “Am I falling apart?” but rather, “Is this a midlife reset… not a breakdown, but an upgrade?”

Maybe I’m not finished yet. Maybe I’m just now meeting the woman I was always meant to become. I am, after all, a complex mix of conflicting identities and ideas: the nurturer, the achiever, the peacemaker, the seeker, the writer, the woman who refuses to stop growing. For years, I hovered between who the world expected me to be and the quiet part of me that was trying to surface. Those versions clashed, overlapped, shaped me, and often left me drained.

Maybe the emptiness I feel now is just the moment when old identities fall away, making room for the truer one beneath. So, when that hollow question rises, “What more is left for me to do?” I’m beginning to see that it’s not really about purpose. It’s about depletion, yes, but it’s also about rebirth. It’s emotional bankruptcy and a spiritual clean slate. It’s burnout and becoming.

This shift in perspective brought to mind Tig Notaro, someone who truly understands what it means to live an authentic life rather than a curated one. When she stepped on stage and said the words “I have cancer” with the same calmness someone might use to say, “good evening,” she wasn’t acting brave for applause. She was simply being present. Her conversation with Anderson Cooper on his “All There Is” podcast revealed the unspoken truth: when you survive the unthinkable, the rest of your life naturally becomes sacred. I feel that.

Tig once said that facing the possibility of losing everything makes ordinary moments sacred. That you stop wasting time performing “fine” for others so they can stay comfortable. That you stop negotiating with your own heart just to make the world feel more manageable for everyone else. I believe that deep inside as well.

Because devastation doesn’t always show itself openly. Sometimes it arrives silently, through small cracks in daily life. Yet on those same days, life still offers mercy: a hummingbird drinking from the fountain, sunlight on my face, the sound of laughter, my husband’s voice, my son’s eyes lighting up when they see me. These small moments remind you of what truly matters. In that moment of recalibration, I began to choose differently.

I started speaking the truth, even the uncomfortable parts. I stopped protecting others’ comfort at the expense of my own peace. I stopped dimming my light so others wouldn’t feel blinded. I stopped negotiating with myself just to keep the illusion of harmony.

And in doing so, I realized I was beginning to love my life again, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s real. Because it’s mine. Because it pulses with both wounds and wonder. Tig embodies the paradox I’m learning to embrace. Hold the grief, hold the joy, and let both shape me without hardening me.

It turns out the emptiness I feared wasn’t a dead end; it was a clearing — a quiet renewal, a sacred pause, and a midlife upgrade disguised as a breakdown. Perhaps what remains for me now isn’t another task, performance, or role to fulfill; perhaps it’s the space to gently and intentionally reintroduce myself to the woman emerging from all of this.

A woman who is unedited, unarmored, and awake. A woman no longer afraid to be a jumble of conflicting identities and changing truths. A woman encounters herself with reverence for the first time. Maybe what remains for me is to become whole again, finally, fiercely, and unapologetically honest and real.