Dear Becoming: When going back feels like going backwards

Dear Becoming,

For nearly 30 years, nursing has been woven into my identity. It has given me purpose, relationships, extraordinary experiences, heartbreak, wisdom, and a front-row seat to humanity at its most vulnerable. I know how to be a nurse. I know how to walk into a room when things are falling apart and figure out what needs to happen next.

Last November, I left.

I believed I was ready for something different. After decades in healthcare, I had experience, perspective, coaching skills, and an entire lifetime of transferable knowledge. Surely there would be possibilities.

Instead, I encountered rejection after rejection. And then something happened that was difficult to ignore: when I removed much of my 30 years of nursing experience from my résumé, I started receiving callbacks.

That experience forced me to confront something painful. Experience—the very thing I believed I had earned—sometimes seemed to be working against me. Eventually, uncertainty became louder than possibility. So I went back to what I knew.

I returned to the bedside.

When capable and aligned are no longer the same thing

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: I can still do this work. I can show up. I can take care of patients. I can draw upon decades of clinical judgment. I can function in environments that would overwhelm many people. But being capable of something doesn’t mean it is still aligned with who I am. That distinction has become impossible for me to ignore.

Going back has helped me recognize how often we return to familiar places not because they are right for us, but because they are places where we know how to succeed. And for me, continuing to override what I know about myself has begun to feel like self-betrayal.

That’s a difficult word. But it’s the right one.

I’ve realized that I cannot continually abandon what I know to be true for myself and simultaneously expect to build self-trust.

So the question becomes:

What happens when you know you can’t stay—but you don’t yet know where you’re going?

That question is where Dear Becoming began.

Not as a business plan. Not because I figured out my next career. And certainly not because I have mastered transition. Quite the opposite.

I’m in it. I’m somewhere between the person I’ve been and the person I’m becoming. And I’m beginning to suspect that many of us are.

Maybe your transition is a career.

Maybe it’s divorce.

A relationship that has changed.

Children leaving home.

Menopause.

Retirement looming.

A caregiving role ending.

Or maybe nothing dramatic happened at all. Maybe you simply woke up one day and realized: The life I built doesn’t quite fit me anymore.

That realization can be terrifying because our instinct is immediately to ask: What am I going to do next?

I’m learning to ask a different question first. What am I learning about myself that I can no longer ignore? Maybe transition begins with recognition We tend to think transition starts when we make the change.

Quit the job.

Leave the relationship.

Move.

Retire.

Start something new.

I’m beginning to believe it starts much earlier.

• It starts with recognition.

Something doesn’t fit.

• Then comes identity.

Who am I if I’m no longer defined by the role I’ve performed for so long?

• Then experience.

What have these years given me that I want to carry forward?

• Then values.

What actually matters to me now—not 20 years ago, not according to everyone else, but now?

• Then imagination.

What might be possible if I don’t require myself to know whether it will work before I’m allowed to explore it?

• And finally, agency.

What’s one small thing I can do to learn more?

This is the becoming of Dear Becoming. Not six steps to a perfect new life. Six places to explore when the old answers no longer work. I don’t know what’s next. That’s perhaps the most important thing I can say here.

I don’t know.

Part of me still wants a beautifully packaged answer—a new title, meaningful work, financial security, and a clear explanation for why everything happened exactly as it did.

I’m learning to resist demanding that answer from myself. Instead, I’m trying something much harder: listening.

• What energizes me?

• What drains me?

• What am I doing because it is familiar?

• What am I doing because I am afraid?

• What identities am I ready to loosen?

• What parts of myself have been waiting for room?

• Where am I betraying myself to maintain security, approval, belonging, or certainty?

• Who am I now?

Not who was I at 30.

Not who did nursing require me to become.

Not who does anyone else need me to be.

Who am I now?

Maybe uncertainty isn’t the problem

We are taught to treat uncertainty as something that needs to be resolved.

Choose.

Decide.

Make a plan.

Move forward.

But perhaps there is another way to experience the in-between.

What if uncertainty can also be a place of discovery?

What if instead of making enormous decisions, we conduct small experiments?

Have the conversation.

Take the class.

Write the post.

Meet the person.

Explore the idea.

Say no once.

Say yes to something unexpected.

Notice what happens inside us.

Then ask: What did I learn about myself?

That’s very different from demanding that every step reveal our destination.

So, Dear Becoming…

This space is for those of us who don’t have it figured out.

For people who have been incredibly competent at lives they may have quietly outgrown.

For caregivers who are learning who they are when they aren’t taking care of everyone.

For professionals wondering whether decades of experience can become something other than more of the same.

For women discovering that the identity that carried them through one season may not be the identity that carries them through the next.

And for anyone standing somewhere between:

I know this isn’t right anymore and I don’t know what’s next.

I’m standing there, too.

I don’t have a map. But I’m beginning to believe I don’t need one yet. Maybe transition doesn’t begin with knowing where we’re going. Maybe it begins when we finally stop abandoning what we’re learning about ourselves.

And perhaps that’s enough for now

I don’t have my entire future figured out, but I’m beginning to see possibilities again.

XO- Dawn