This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
Years of pouring myself into everyone else's next chapter.
In:
Less noise on the outside, more noise on the inside, asking what sparks my curiosity?
Entering:
A chapter with my name on it.
Growing up, I wasn’t only Kristi. I was “one of the twins.”
My sister and I shared a birthday, a childhood, friends, classrooms, celebrations, and a kind of built-in identity. People knew us as a pair before they knew either of us alone. There was comfort in that, and also a kind of invisibility I didn’t yet know how to name. It never occurred to me to question it because it was simply the way my world worked.
The first birthday I celebrated without my sister beside me felt oddly incomplete. There was one cake, one set of candles, and one person being celebrated. No shared spotlight. No automatic comparison. No other half of the story standing next to me. I hadn’t expected something so ordinary to feel so disorienting.
I loved my sister just as much as I always had. That never changed. But I also loved discovering who I was when I wasn’t automatically introduced as half of a pair. For the first time, I could hear my own name without it echoing beside hers.
Looking back, that wasn’t the only time life asked me to redefine myself. Over the years, I collected roles that connected me to other people: wife, mother, leader, founder, writer, podcast host. Each one expanded my world. Each one became another way people recognized me. I poured my energy into raising children, building organizations, creating communities, and helping other people find their footing. I don’t regret a minute of it.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking what I wanted when no one else’s needs were setting the terms. My children are adults now, building lives of their own. The organizations I helped build continue in other capable hands. For the first time in decades, my calendar has more open space than obligation. The quiet is unfamiliar, but not empty. It feels strangely like that first birthday on my own: a little disorienting, a little freeing, and full of questions I thought I had already answered.
Life has a way of returning us to ourselves. The circumstances change, but the invitation is familiar. If no one else is defining your role, what would you choose? What still sparks your curiosity? What kind of life do you build when you are no longer arranging it around everyone else’s needs?
I’m still figuring that out.
These days, when someone asks what I do, I pause a little longer before answering. No single title feels big enough anymore. Maybe that’s what this chapter is teaching me. A life cannot be fully explained by the roles we have played, even the ones we have loved. I still have a twin. I’ll always be a mother. Those identities are woven into me. They are not disappearing. They are simply no longer the whole answer.
Every so often, life hands us another chance to become fully ourselves. The first time happened when people began to see me as an individual instead of a pair. This time, it is happening because life has made room for me to ask a different question.
Not “Who am I?” I’ve known her all along.
The question is: What parts of me have been waiting for enough space to step forward?
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What I really love about this--or when I hear this feeling echoed in other women--is that you are much younger than me and I am so glad that young(er) women are asking this question of themselves at an earlier time in their lives. I'm not even sure I can handle the question entirely, but I do know it's mine to answer, despite the roles I continue to have that are "connected to others." Thank you.
Beautiful!