Shedding Your Skin: The Layers of Becoming

No one really warns you that becoming a business owner is also about becoming a new you — again and again. You’ll evolve, grow, and yes, shed your skin more times than you can count.

It starts out as a cliché. Shedding skin like a snake. Becoming who you're meant to be. But eventually, those sayings start to ring true — like a loud bell you can’t un-hear once it’s been struck.

When I launched my business and stepped away from direct sales and no longer working forsomeone else, I didn’t fully know who I was. My confidence was low, and suddenly, I had to sell myself in a way I never had before. Saying, “I’m a virtual assistant,” out loud felt wild, even though I knew I was capable.

I picked up software quickly, I understood systems, I loved admin work, but knowing something and having to confidently say it (and sell it) are two very different things. I was learning how to balance motherhood and entrepreneurship without really knowing how to voice what I needed. I’m lucky my husband is incredibly supportive and could see what I was building, even when I couldn’t yet. That was step one: shedding the first layer.

As time went by and with more client work under my belt, the wins, losses, and lessons released another version of me. This time, it wasn’t about logistics. It was about unlearning beliefs I’d carried since childhood.

If you’ve read my chapter in Letters to the Sisterhood, you know I’ve grappled with the realization that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. You’ve read about the family dynamics, the doubts I had after high school, and the identities I took on in survival mode. But stepping fully into entrepreneurship meant I had to look deeper. Where did those doubts come from? Could I move beyond them?

At some point early in my journey as a business owner, I had to confront a part of myself I was deeply insecure about: my out-of-the-box thinking.

I’d always offered ideas to improve efficiency or grow sales in various roles and companies, and while a few past bosses encouraged it, others… didn’t get it at all. The ones who didn’t understand? They stayed on replay in my head for years, shaping beliefs I carried into adulthood. Who did I think I was, thinking differently?

But in doing the work, the real, deep internal work,  I began to see this trait not as something to hide, but something to celebrate.

This was a hard layer to shed, and it took help. Working with Jenine Lamberton from Innately Wise in Australia was transformative, especially while writing my memoir (yes, it still needs finishing, but that draft is alive and well). Jenine helped me get beyond myself. And somewhere between her support and a hotel room in Peterborough where I locked myself away to write, something shifted. I started to feel powerful, not in a loud way, but in an I-know-who-I-am kind of way. Other people started noticing, too. Suddenly, I wasn’t just pretending anymore, I was her. The woman I’d been becoming all along.

Right now, I’m in the next season of shedding: letting go of relationships that no longer serve the version of me that’s still unfolding. I’m shedding friendships, acquaintances, and places I no longer belong.

Over the years, I’ve watched friendships shift, especially after becoming a mom. Some simply dissolved because our lives no longer aligned. Others fell away because the people I used to party with didn’t understand my new focus, my ambition becoming the biggest topic of conversation. Some friendships are for a reason, some for a season, and some forever or whatever the saying is.

But lately, I’m seeing that some friendships are held together only by a shared history. Not shared values, or growth, or even present-day connection. Just a memory of who we used to be together, and those are starting to fade.

Some will stay, I expect they’ll go through a pause or a quiet reset. The love will remain, but the dynamic may change and that’s okay. Others won’t come with me, and that deserves a moment of grief… but now is not that moment.

Now is the time to build. To welcome the people who are meeting me in this version of my life, the version that’s dreaming bigger, working harder, and aligning deeper.

That same out-of-the-box thinking that once made me feel so “other” is now one of the very things my clients love about working with me. It’s what makes me different; it’s how I help people create real change in their business because I don’t just see the puzzle pieces. I see how they could come together in an entirely new way.  That thing I used to feel most insecure about? Now, it’s what I celebrate most.

The grief for past friendships and versions of me will show up later. In a Facebook memory or a moment of celebration or hardship when my brain automatically goes to reach out to someone who no longer holds space in my life.

But those moments are being slowly replaced by new ones, by the people who are standing in the ring with me right now, who are chasing dreams alongside me, who get it.

Growth is uncomfortable.

Shedding your skin is uncomfortable.

Growing a business is uncomfortable.

But if you can sit with it, even for a moment,  you’ll catch a glimpse of who you’re becoming. And it’s something pretty damn amazing.