What’s Ready to Die: Letting Go of Who I Was Through Waves of Uncertainty and Loss

In a year of heartbreak, disillusionment, and radical change, I reflect on the deeper truths unearthed through personal and collective collapse — and the parts of me that must now die so something new can live.

The Earth Shook — and So Did I

This year, my world fell apart in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
I lost my job.
Friends I love moved across the world.
An institution I poured years into collapsed — not from outside forces, but from hidden decisions made behind closed doors. What we had been creating for years — content, programs, impact — was dismantled almost overnight.

And those of us who remained were left not only without structure, but without answers.

It was not just professional loss. It was a spiritual rupture.

When Certainty Disappears: The Warrior Meets the Abyss

This wasn’t my first wave of uncertainty — but it was quite unpleasant.

And with it came questions that cut deeper than any job title or reputation ever could:

• Who am I when there’s nothing left to prove?

• What is left of me when the ground beneath me disappears?

• What do I do when the systems I believed in collapse — not with dignity, but in silence and betrayal?

These questions were not just philosophical. They were existential. They stripped me bare.

In the silence that followed — after the goodbyes, after the betrayals, after the collapse — I felt a different kind of death. Not the kind where the heart stops, but the kind where the self dissolves.

It opened doors to hidden grief, to childhood fears, to the terror of not being able to provide, belong, or feel safe.

It opened me. And it hurt.

But it also revealed something I’d been too busy to notice: some parts of me are ready to die.

What’s Ready to Die?

As I walked through grief and uncertainty, I began to see the identities I had clung to… no longer served me.

And so, I ask: What parts of me are ready to be buried with this season of endings?

I offer this list — not as a conclusion, but as a ceremony: The appeaser; The one who needed permission; The one who settled; The one who apologized for needing validation; The one who didn’t believe they could start again; The self that stayed small to feel safe; The belief that pain meant I was broken; The loyalty to what no longer was serving my well being.

There Is No Going Back — And That’s The Point

A wise friend recently told me: "Maybe these painful experiences are not meant to destroy you, but to support your mission — to serve others through what you’ve survived."

And something in me softened.
Because that’s the truth I’ve been circling.
This is not just a collapse.
It’s a rite of passage.

A Pema Chödrön Quote That Found Me: “To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that’s life.”

These words anchored me.

Because this isn’t the first death I’ve lived through. And it won’t be the last.
But with every death, something new is born.

So Where Do I Go From Here?

That’s the portal I now stand before.

How do I serve now? What skills do I offer, stripped of titles or institutions? What truths have these losses carved into me — and who needs to hear them?

I don’t have all the answers. But I’m walking forward.
Not as the person I was — but as someone more honest, more awake, and more rooted in what truly matters.

I wrote this for anyone who has lost more than they thought they could survive.
For those navigating the space between identities.
For those asking the same questions I am.