The Wildwoven Path of Becoming

Transformation isn’t just something you go through.

It’s something that goes through you.

It shakes your foundations, unspools who you thought you were, and demands that you become something new.

And yet—most of us are taught to navigate these seismic shifts alone.

Somewhere along the way, I started to believe that healing meant leaving pieces of myself behind. That becoming more meant cutting away the parts of me that were too messy, too wild, too much.

But what if that was never the way?

What if real transformation isn’t about exile—but integration?

This is the story of how I stopped trying to slice and dice my past selves and started gathering them back in.

I love a good becoming story. Katniss in The Hunger Games. Hermione in Harry Potter. The whole “look how much I’ve evolved” moment.

But lately I’ve realized —it isn’t just about where we’re going. It’s also about what we try to leave behind.

Bridget, Thelma, and Neytiri: The Versions of Me

For me, the heroines that most capture my life before this evolution are Bridget Jones, Thelma (from Thelma & Louise), and Neytiri from Avatar.

But here’s the thing.

I LOVE that Bridget Jones version of me.

She’s got SO MANY STORIES. Embarrassing. Funny. Tender. Sweet. Awful.

Like the time I broke up with a boyfriend because he called me whining about his plumbing not working—on the same day my best friend’s dad died. (He knew! I was kind. But firm.)

Or the time I tried to MBA-brain my way into love—engineering the perfect romance with an Italian ex-coworker, complete with sambuca, harmonicas, and a night so good it belonged in a novel—only to ruin it by sending him a series of deeply enthusiastic emails about crocuses while he was just… on vacation.

And all those moments dancing on pool tables and cartwheeling across the street? I wouldn’t trade those for the world. This version of me? She was a bit bumbling, sure, and she wore her heart on her sleeve—but she was living. Fully, messily, unapologetically living. 

And the pieces of that I’m hanging onto? They’re the parts that are wildly, unequivocally me.

Thelma, Neytiri, and the Fight for What’s Sacred

As for Thelma?
Well, without getting into all the gory details, let’s just say I didn’t choose to drive my car off a cliff with my best friend.

But I did learn the hard way that society loves to blame women for men’s massive, gaping, Grand Canyon-sized flaws.

Because here’s the real kicker: If Thelma & Louise had been told from a man’s perspective, we all know how it would’ve gone.

• Thelma should’ve known better.
• Thelma shouldn’t have been drinking.
• Thelma shouldn’t have trusted a man to be kind.

Meanwhile, the guy who assaulted her? Barely a blip in the moral outrage department.

And that part of my story? The one I don’t tell in detail? It has made me a FIERCE defender of women against the patriarchal forces that devalue us, discard us, and then blame us for the damage they caused.

Or, as America Ferrera so perfectly put it in The Barbie Movie:

“It is literally impossible to be a woman …You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.”

And I am sick to death of that.

Because here’s what’s true:

• Thelma deserved better.
• Women deserve better.
• And I will go to the mat for any woman who has ever been made to carry shame for a man’s failure to be a decent human being.

 Neytiri: The One Who Knew—And The One Who Forgot

And then there’s Neytiri.

I grew up inside Olympic National Park, surrounded by old-growth trees and wilderness. The land wasn’t just a backdrop—it was alive, sacred, woven into me.

So when I first saw Neytiri in Avatar, something in me recognized her. She wasn’t just a warrior—she was a protector of something ancient, something worth defending.

I’d like to say I only relate with the first-movie Neytiri –the fierce, untamed warrior who taught Jake Sully how to see. The one who led, not followed. The one who knew her place was woven into the land itself—not inside some war-driven, bro-capitalist version of power.

But.

I am also the second-movie Neytiri.

The one who shrank herself.
The one who followed orders instead of leading.
The one who let someone else be the voice, the power, the authority.
The one who tried to fit inside a world that was never built for her.

I have given away my power. I have convinced myself that I needed to be less, be smaller, be more palatable.

I have tried to shape myself into something the patriarchy would accept.
And when that failed, I blamed myself for not fitting.

I became the Neytiri who followed Jake Sully into battle instead of leading him into something deeper.

And then I woke up.

Here’s the thing … Neytiri was never meant to follow.
She was meant to lead. To fight for something wilder, older, more real.

And so am I.

Neytiri wasn’t separate from Bridget or Thelma. She was always there, watching, learning, waiting for me to remember who I was.

All these stories, now that I am integrating them, have given me the strength to stand up for what I believe in, and face down the damage created by electing a man found liable for sexual abuse into the white house for the second time. Someone who is hell bent on raping and pillaging the very earth that supports life –for bitcoin money!! And dismantling all the programs that actually CARE for humanity outside corporate greed. 

And his bro-capitalist misogynistic “Christian” Nationalist cronies who want women back in the kitchen popping out babies like bunnies while they go back to the “MAGA” days when white males had all the power. 

So, ready or not …

This fierce, courageous, resilient, imperfect, messy, fully integrated version of me is the one picking up Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth.

She’s the one standing in the fire.

She’s the one saying, enough.

We Don’t Get to Slice and Dice Our Past Selves

There’s no clean scalpel cut between who we were and who we’re becoming. We are all, as Maggie Smith so perfectly put it, nesting dolls—carrying every version of ourselves inside.

And yet, we’re constantly told to shed parts of ourselves, to let go of old identities, to shame ourselves for the things that men did to us, to kill off the versions of ourselves that don’t fit neatly into the story we want to tell now.

But what if we’re getting it wrong?

What if healing isn’t about exile—but integration? What if the you who once believed in fairy tales, the you who stayed too long, the you who didn’t know better (but was doing her best) still has wisdom you need?

That’s Where I Come In.

I don’t have all the answers. But I have deep understanding and compassion for the messy unexpected tangled up pieces that have to be brought into the light you as you metamorphose into your whole self.

The work I do isn’t just about guiding people through transformation—although that is my superpower. 

But it’s also about changing how we understand transformation altogether.

You don’t have to exile your past selves. You don’t have to pretend you have it all together. You don’t have to navigate the messy middle alone.

If you’re in a season of reinvention—whether in leadership, activism, or your personal life—you don’t have to figure it out alone. 

If you’re ready to stop fighting yourself and start moving through change in a way that integrates all the tangled up moments of your life, here’s your first step:

🔥 Take the Wildwoven Seasonal Assessment. 🔥

Because this path you’re on? It’s winding. It’s messy. And, yes, sometimes it turns you into goo. 

But that’s not failure. That’s transformation. That’s power. That’s you—mid-becoming.

Remember: If you’re in the thick of your own becoming—piecing together who you’ve been and who you’re becoming—you don’t have to go through it alone.