For years I had a role that seemed to explain everything about me. I taught, led spiritual programs, worked in centers and served a larger mission. People knew me through what I did and the position I held. But privately I began to ask a question I had not given myself much room to answer: who am I when I am no longer that role?
I had spent so much of my life being devoted to the work that I could barely imagine another way of living. Then I met Edward and felt a kind of partnership I wanted to choose for myself. Suddenly the future I pictured included family, home, freedom and a life in which I was allowed to be more than the person everyone expected.
Choosing my own life did not feel easy.
I left a familiar community and professional identity. The transition was painful, and I had to start rebuilding with far less certainty than I was used to. Traveling together and later becoming a mother brought out parts of me I had not been able to express. I was learning how to make decisions from self-trust rather than from the need for recognition or permission.
I also let go of a spiritual name I had used and chose to be known by Leimomi, my own middle name. It felt like giving myself a beginning that was still rooted in who I already was. I did not need to become a perfect, completely different person. I needed room to live as myself.
The freedom I wanted was not freedom from service. It was freedom to serve without losing myself.
Why this still shapes my work
That experience is why I return again and again to sovereignty, sincere choice and the courage to hear your own voice. I do not want someone to follow me so closely that she forgets how to listen to herself. I want her to recognize her gifts and build a life that belongs to her.
Some people will recognize this story through a career, a relationship, a family role, a business partnership or a community they have outgrown. The particulars may be different. The question can still be the same: what becomes possible when you stop asking permission to be yourself?
What about your own story?
Which identity or expectation have you outgrown, and what part of you wants room to be heard?
You can sit with the question, journal about it or bring it to a conversation. Nothing needs to be purchased to begin.
This article adapts an earlier first-person founder story. Spiritual practices are described as Leimomi's personal beliefs and experiences, not medical treatment or verified economic outcomes. Older offers and campaigns mentioned in the original source are not implied to be current.