To build one's own identity

I have deeply missed this space: writing to you, but also writing to a version of myself that will probably die as part of my own evolution. I want to bring forward a question: how have you been measuring your own success?

Throughout my life, I have been married to multiple identities that have caused me a great suffering: entrepreneur, wife, divorcée, cyclist, runner, ambitious, warrior… All of them have been part of my story, but today I understand that none of them defines my success.

There is something very pure in who I have been whilst moving through each version of myself: the cyclist with the resilience to ride 300 kilometres and the desire to give everything; the woman who carried herself through a divorce whilst sharing a business; the one who chose to return to academia, move countries, and begin again; the one who continues to choose herself in every transition and move through it fully.

Today, I measure my success by my ability to rebuild myself without ceasing to be who I am; by the sustained freedom to choose myself as many times as necessary; by this hard-earned autonomy, an autonomy that has required deep spiritual work, a willingness to move through discomfort, to ask for feedback, to have uncomfortable conversations, and yes, to make mistakes. That too has been part of the journey.

As a Latin American woman, for many years I viewed success through traditional structures: a happy woman with a husband and babies… I judged myself through that lens. I could not understand why my dreams were different.

Today, my idea of success goes far beyond that. I am fascinated by what it means to learn to play squash and by how much joy this sport brings me. I am fascinated by the process of learning how to invest and breaking through the fear of loss. I am fascinated by how difficult it has been to learn academic writing, sitting down again and again to rewrite and by the importance of the social sciences whilst the more sacred part of me continues to understand the value of intuition in decision-making. I am fascinated by learning through countless research papers, especially as I have always been someone who learns through lived experience. I am fascinated by the process of getting to know a new man who is bringing fresh perspectives into my life… I am fascinated by every client who comes to me, where both their life and mine are transformed through each coaching session.

I am fascinated by learning what it means to create the right conditions. When I was little, the conditions were not necessarily there; yet I searched for ways to create them, and that made me someone willing to take risks.

I had not written since October last year, precisely since beginning at the University of Cambridge, an educational structure that has opened an entirely new world to me. My life, in the eyes of those who define success through a happily married woman with children, looks completely chaotic… I have always stepped outside the mould, like so many women who have pursued independence and their dreams. That does not mean I have dismissed motherhood or love.

Choosing to build an identity of my own has brought significant internal tension because of external judgement from a social model and a system that still is not designed for women to develop into the fullest expression of themselves.

Someone once told me: “You are doing too much.”

That comment left me breathless, because that person cannot imagine how many times I applied for opportunities simply to receive a scholarship, for example. That person does not understand that I must work in order to study. That person has not walked my path to understand my victories, my battles, my greatest dreams, and what it has meant to arrive where I am today, because very little is celebrated when a woman chooses educational, social, and personal growth that goes beyond motherhood or marriage.

I do not come from a background full of privilege, and simply being a woman already places us on a different step altogether.

During a university programme, we once completed an exercise about privilege, and it felt almost like a shock. I am at Homerton College, a space that constantly invites me to think about systemic transformation and regenerative leadership… A place that has given me the conditions to create new thoughts and new knowledge.

These past months have been exhausting and joyful at once: working, studying, moving house twice, making mistakes, charging forward relentlessly… I became ill, and that forced me to pause deeply and rethink everything. I have removed things from my plate. New people have entered my life, I have left certain places behind, there are friendships we decided not to continue, and projects that did not work out. There are also friendships where we continue choosing one another because we believe in who we are and in our essence, giving ourselves space to understand that the path is not linear.

Recently, I asked my mentor, one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met —: “How do you deal with failure?”

He said: “In my career as a product innovator, one out of every hundred experiments works. Failure has always been part of the process of exploration.” Then he added: “I do not see it as failure; it is part of life’s experiment trying, seeing whether it works, and continuing. Over time, we refine things more and more, but it is all experience.”

The mentoring I have received from him has created profound changes within me. With him, I am able to speak about spirituality, business, and the understanding that nothing is truly separate. We have spoken about legacy, death, and what it really means to be alive within this experiment called life.

To you, who have been reading me for a long time: I am here. Learning, reading, rebuilding myself, playing squash, barely using social media but using my brain intensely, walking barefoot, drinking cacao, and working even more deeply with my body from an energetic perspective.

Lately, an entirely new world of realities I never knew existed has opened before me, and I must admit that the Buddhist centre has played an important role in helping me work with my mind. There, in my daily meditation practice, I meet the version of who I am each day.

One of the most memorable shifts in my mental reprogramming is that I have begun to fall in love more with the process than with the outcome. Before, success seemed tied to the identity of “being something”; now, it is about expansion.

Hello!!! I have returned to continue getting naked.

Love,

Amazonia Arroyo