Nobody tells you that becoming yourself can feel like losing yourself first. There is a version of grief that comes with becoming a different woman.

It isn’t always grief over a person.

Sometimes you’re grieving yourself.

The woman you used to be.

The life she understood.

The things she tolerated.

The people she loved.

The dreams she once thought would make her happy. The personality everyone had gotten comfortable with. The future she had already imagined. And perhaps the strangest part is that she doesn’t have to be a terrible version of you for you to outgrow her.

Sometimes you love her.

Sometimes you’re incredibly proud of her.

Sometimes you understand exactly why she became who she became.

You just know you cannot keep being her. I think that’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to understand through my own Becoming Destinie journey.

I didn’t simply have to decide who I wanted to become. At different points, I had to confront a much more uncomfortable question:

Who am I when I stop being the woman everyone already knows?

There Were Versions of Me That Made Perfect Sense at the Time

When I look backward at my life, I don’t see one Destinie.

I see many.

The girl.

The survivor.

The responsible one.

The dreamer.

The woman who loved deeply.

The woman who gave too much.

The woman who wanted to be understood.

The woman who didn’t realize how much of herself she had built around other people’s expectations.

The creator.

The writer.

The woman who wanted to disappear.

The woman who wanted to finally be seen.

The woman who could walk into a room confidently.

The woman who would go home afterward and question everything.

They were all me.

That’s something Becoming Destinie has forced me to understand. We talk about identity as though there is one permanent person hidden somewhere inside us and our job is to find her.

I don’t think I believe that anymore. I think we become ourselves repeatedly. Different environments introduce us to different parts of ourselves.

Love changes us.

Loss changes us.

Success changes us.

Failure changes us.

Leaving changes us.

Creating changes us.

Being alone changes us.

Being seen changes us.

And sometimes the person who got you through one chapter isn’t the person meant to lead the next one.

I Didn’t Know How Much of My Identity Was Relational

This was harder to recognize.

Sometimes you know yourself through the people around you.

You’re someone’s daughter.

Someone’s sister.

Someone’s girlfriend.

Someone’s best friend.

Someone’s employee.

Someone’s problem.

Someone’s responsibility.

Someone’s idea of who you are.

And after enough years of being reflected through other people’s eyes, their understanding of you can quietly become your understanding of yourself. You know how you’re expected to respond.

What role you’re supposed to play.

How much space you’re allowed to take.

Which version of you makes everyone comfortable.

You learn your character.

And you play her.

Sometimes so well that you forget you’re performing. Then something changes.

A relationship ends.

A friendship disappears.

You move.

You start over.

Your priorities change.

You become interested in things nobody associates with you.

You stop responding the way people expect.

And suddenly the identity that once felt natural starts feeling like a costume. That’s when becoming gets uncomfortable. Because changing yourself privately is one thing. Changing in front of people who already have a story about you is another.

People Can Become Attached to a Version of You That No Longer Exists

There is something unsettling about realizing someone knows you very well—

but knows an old you.

They know what you used to accept.

They know what used to make you angry.

They know the things you used to want.

They know the version of you who needed their approval.

They know the dreams you told them five years ago.

They know your old boundaries.

Your old insecurities.

Your old patterns.

Your old priorities.

And sometimes they’ll keep interacting with that woman even after you’ve stopped being her. That’s where growth can become lonely. Because you can find yourself trying to explain:

I don’t think like that anymore.

I don’t want that anymore.

That isn’t important to me anymore.

I don’t react that way anymore.

That’s not who I am anymore.

And eventually you realize you cannot spend your entire life proving your evolution to people committed to remembering your history.

Sometimes becoming requires allowing people to misunderstand you.

I Thought Finding Myself Would Feel More Certain

I imagined self-discovery would feel like clarity.

Like one day I’d wake up and everything would click.

This is who I am.

This is my career.

This is my style.

These are my people.

This is my purpose.

This is where I belong.

This is what I want.

Instead, some of the biggest periods of growth in my life have looked like:

I don’t know anymore.

And that terrified me at first. Because we’re taught that uncertainty means we’re lost. But what if sometimes uncertainty simply means your old answers stopped being true?

That’s different.

Maybe you don’t know what you want because you’re finally questioning what you were taught to want.

Maybe you don’t recognize yourself because you’re no longer performing the identity everyone recognizes.

Maybe your old life feels uncomfortable because your desires have changed.

Maybe the confusion isn’t proof that something has gone wrong.

Maybe you’re standing in the space between identities.

That’s something I’ve become fascinated with while writing Becoming Destinie.

The woman in between.

She’s one of the least celebrated versions of us. Everyone loves the before-and-after story.

We love:

This was me before.

Look at me now.

But what about the middle?

What about the woman who knows she can’t go backward but has absolutely no idea what’s ahead?

That’s where so much of becoming actually happens.

The Middle Isn’t Very Glamorous

The middle can be boring.

Confusing.

Embarrassing.

Lonely.

You try something and realize you hate it.

You change your mind.

You become obsessed with something for three months.

You dress differently.

You meet new people.

You revisit an old dream.

You abandon another one.

You realize something you thought was your personality was actually a coping mechanism.

You realize something you were ashamed of is actually one of your favorite things about yourself.

You stop explaining yourself.

Then start questioning yourself.

Then stop again.

There isn’t always a beautiful montage. Sometimes you’re just sitting on your bed thinking:

Who the hell am I now?

And maybe that question deserves more curiosity than fear.

I Had to Stop Trying to Become a “Better” Destinie

For a long time, growth sounded like improvement to me.

Become more successful.

More disciplined.

More accomplished.

More healed.

More confident.

More productive.

More mature.

More impressive.

Essentially:

Take the woman you already are and optimize her.

But what if becoming isn’t always about improving the existing character?

What if you’re allowed to change the character entirely?

Maybe you don’t want her career anymore.

Maybe you don’t want her relationship.

Maybe you don’t want her lifestyle.

Maybe you don’t want her definition of success.

Maybe you don’t want to be known for the things she was known for.

Maybe you don’t want to keep proving that you’re strong.

Maybe you’re tired of making every decision according to what makes sense on paper.

Maybe the next version of you isn’t necessarily “better.”

Maybe she’s just more yours.

That distinction changed something for me. I stopped asking:

How do I become a better version of myself?

And started asking:

What am I actually curious about now?

Curiosity Introduced Me to Parts of Myself I Couldn’t Think My Way Into

I think we over-intellectualize self-discovery.

Journal about her.

Visualize her.

Write affirmations.

Make the Pinterest board.

Describe your future self.

There is value in all of that.

But eventually you have to go live.

Because there are versions of yourself you cannot meet in your bedroom.

You meet them through experience.

Go somewhere.

Take the class.

Wear the outfit.

Apply for the thing.

Create something nobody asked for.

Take yourself somewhere beautiful.

Have a conversation with someone completely different from you.

Learn something you’re terrible at.

Change your environment.

Say yes.

Say no.

Let yourself be a beginner.

Make something embarrassing.

Try something simply because it sounds interesting.

I have learned things about myself through experience that I never would have discovered through analysis.

Sometimes you don’t think your way into your next identity. You live your way into her.

I Miss Some of the Women I Used to Be

That’s something I don’t want to romanticize away.

Growth isn’t always:

“Thank God I’m not her anymore.”

Sometimes I miss her.

I miss how little she knew.

I miss certain dreams before reality complicated them.

I miss people who belonged to old versions of my life.

I miss environments I’ll never experience the same way again.

I miss versions of myself who existed before certain experiences changed me.

There are pieces of old Destinie that I would never resurrect completely but still hold enormous tenderness for.

She wasn’t stupid.

She wasn’t weak.

She wasn’t embarrassing.

She was becoming too.

She just didn’t know it yet.

And I think part of growing up is learning how to honor your previous selves without allowing nostalgia to turn them into prisons.

You can love her.

You can thank her.

You can miss her.

You can forgive her.

And you can still leave her behind.

Becoming Destinie Was Never Supposed to Have a Perfect Ending

That’s what this personal series has increasingly become for me.

Not:

Here’s who I was, here’s what happened, and here’s the perfectly healed woman I became.

I don’t believe life works that neatly.

Becoming Destinie is me documenting the movement.

The contradictions.

The identities.

The things I’ve survived.

The things I’ve misunderstood.

The things I’ve learned.

The things I’m still learning.

The things I once wanted.

The things I want now.

The woman I was.

The woman I am.

And whoever comes next.

Because I don’t think becoming ever really ends.

And eventually, that realization became part of why I created The Becoming Session.

The Becoming Session

There are conversations I wish women had more permission to have.

Not:

How do I become successful?

Not:

How do I fix myself?

Not even:

What’s my five-year plan?

But:

Who am I now?

What have I outgrown?

What actually interests me?

What parts of myself have I never explored?

What would I try if I didn’t have to explain it to anyone?

What kind of life would make me curious to wake up tomorrow?

That’s the space I wanted The Becoming Session to hold.

It’s a private one-on-one conversation for the woman somewhere between who she has been and who she is becoming.

You don’t need to arrive with a transformation plan.

You don’t need a personal brand.

You don’t need to know your purpose.

You don’t need to know who your “highest self” is.

You can arrive confused.

Curious.

Restless.

Excited.

Uncertain.

Full of ideas.

Or simply aware that something in your life no longer fits.

Because sometimes the beginning of becoming isn’t a decision.

It’s a conversation.

Maybe You Haven’t Lost Yourself

Maybe the version of you everyone recognizes simply isn’t big enough anymore. Maybe you’re not supposed to go find the woman you used to be. Maybe you’re supposed to meet someone you’ve never been before.

And yes, that can feel like loss.

Because something is ending.

An identity.

A relationship with yourself.

A familiar story.

A way of being known.

But endings and beginnings often occupy the same room. I had to lose versions of myself that everyone knew.

Versions people understood.

Versions I understood.

Versions that once made perfect sense.

And for a while, I didn’t know who came next. I’m learning not to be afraid of that anymore. Because every time I’ve thought,

I don’t know who I am anymore,

there has been another possibility hiding underneath it:

Maybe I’m about to find out.

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The Becoming Session — with Destinie Dianne

For the woman between versions.

A private one-on-one conversation centered around identity, reinvention, creativity, self-expression and the strange, beautiful space between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming.

You don’t have to arrive as her.

Come as the woman becoming her.