The Cost of Transformation

I know who I’m becoming. I can see her clearly, more clearly than I could have a year ago. And still, some days, I don’t fully trust her yet.

Nobody tells you that part. You’d think once you had the language for who you’re growing into, the tension would ease up.

Some of that tension is about other people. There are people in my life who knew an earlier version of me, and I love them for it, but they’re still relating to that version, not the one standing here now. They don’t mean any harm by it. It’s just hard to keep up with somebody who’s changing in real time, especially if you weren’t there for the changing part, only the after. I’ve had to accept that some people will always be a few steps behind who I actually am now. That’s not always their fault, and it’s not always mine either.

But if I’m honest, the harder tension isn’t other people. It’s me. It’s the moments where I catch myself making a decision the newer version of me would make, and some old, quieter voice in my head still asks, “…are you sure?” It’s not that I don’t believe in who I’m becoming. It’s that trust takes longer to build than identity does. I can know something about myself and still need time to actually believe it all the way.

My pastor said something in a sermon a while back that stuck with me. He said, “…in order for transformation to happen, death has to occur.” Not the dramatic kind. He meant the old you has to die. The old habits, the old patterns, the old way you used to move through the world, all of it has to actually end before something new can take its place. You can’t become while you’re still holding on to who you were.

I didn’t fully get that until I lived it. A few years ago I got sick, seriously sick. Pneumonia, in the hospital for eight days, kind of sick. While I was in there, they found some other things happening inside my body, things I didn’t even know were going on until that hospital stay forced me to slow down enough to find out. It was a hard week. But I chuckle about it now, because that hospital stay started the day after I finished a twenty-one day fast.

I had spent twenty-one days praying for transformation, fasting for it, asking God to change me from the inside out. And then almost right after, my body forced the issue. It was like I asked for the old to get exposed and dealt with, and God answered in a way I never would have picked for myself.

What I didn’t expect either was what came after. I left the hospital, and instead of bouncing back, I sank into a depression I wasn’t prepared for. And then, on top of it, we got hit with one of those wild Texas freezes, the kind that shuts everything down. So I was already down, already weak, and now I was stuck inside with nowhere to go and no reason to get up. I remember lying in bed for days. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I wasn’t processing anything the way I normally would have. I’d take calls from loved ones curled up in a ball under the covers, barely able to talk, just trying to get through the conversation.

My first day back at work, I was a wreck on the inside. Not because of the job itself, but because I was convinced everyone could look at me and just know. Know that I had just been somewhere dark and was still climbing out of it. I was so sure it was written all over me, even though nobody said a word.

I really had to fight through some rough emotions, hard conversations, and things I didn't think I was built for. I learned that some of the best versions of ourselves lay on the other side of a storm.

I understand now that everything I need to push through actually lies within me. Before, I was basing my survival, my making it through, on how connected I was to other people. Don't get me wrong, community still matters, it always will. But what happens when the storm passes for everyone else, and they get back to their own lives, and you're the one still left to deal with it, alone? I had to learn that I couldn't outsource my own survival. I had to find what was already in me. Looking back now, I understand that season for what it actually was.

Nobody really talks about the grief that comes with that kind of transformation, either. I miss her sometimes, the old version of me. Not because she was better, but because she was familiar. She didn’t ask as much of me. She didn’t require the same discipline, the same boundaries, the same hard conversations. There’s a version of grief that shows up when you grow, and it’s real, even when the growth was necessary, and even when you’d choose it again. You can be grateful for who you’re becoming and still mourn who you had to leave behind to get here. Both things are true at the same time.

I want to be clear that this is my becoming story. Everybody’s becoming journey looks different, and it should. But I think one part of it is pretty common, and it’s this. Sometimes we’re eager to just get back to who we were. I remember saying it out loud more than once. “I can’t wait to get back to normal. I can’t wait to get back to me.” And the reality was, that was never going to happen. There was no getting back. The new version of me had to make adjustments. She was different, whether I was ready for that or not.

And I’ve had to make peace with that, because I still honor old Dominique. She got me through some genuinely hard times. She made decisions, in the moment, with what she had, that helped me survive and navigate circumstances I didn’t ask for. I don’t look back at her with embarrassment or judgment. I look back with gratitude. She did her job. She just wasn’t built to carry what comes next. That part belongs to who I’m becoming now.

Here’s the other thing I’ve learned. Transformation costs. Sometimes it’s a relationship that can’t survive the new you, no matter how much history you have with it. Sometimes it’s old habits you’ve relied on for years, the ones that used to feel like comfort and now just feel like weight. Sometimes it’s a whole way of doing life that worked for a while but was never going to carry you all the way.

I’ve stopped waiting for the trust to show up before I act like the person I’m becoming. I don’t think that’s how it works. You have to keep choosing her, even on the days she still feels unfamiliar, even when the people around you are a step behind, even when some part of you is still asking permission from a version of yourself you’ve already outgrown.

That smile in the picture didn't come easy. It's not the smile of someone who had it all figured out or who skipped the hard parts to get here. It's the smile of someone who knows exactly what it cost to get to this side of it. I'm not smiling because none of that happened. I'm smiling because I know what it took, and I'm still here and somehow still finding reasons to genuinely smile through it. And as crazy as it sounds, if it took all of that to get me here, I'd do it again.

If this stirred something in you, I'd love to hear it. What has growth cost you? Come share it in Say the Thing.

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