Column: Nadia Laws & ‘She Builds Again’
[Opinion column written by Nadia Laws]
There is a particular kind of restlessness that can creep up on you in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday.
Nothing is necessarily wrong. Your life may look perfectly fine from the outside. You have a job, a family, responsibilities, people you love. You have worked hard to get here.
And yet, somewhere inside, there is a quiet question: Is this still the life I want?
I know that question well.
I have reinvented myself several times. I started my career as a journalist, eventually left to build my own PR business, and spent more than a decade running my company in Bermuda. Then I did something that probably looked a little crazy to some people: I left Bermuda and moved to Bali.
Now I am in the middle of another reinvention, building a career as a coach for women ready to embark on a new chapter of their own.
That is why I am excited to introduce She Builds Again—a column about navigating change, rediscovering yourself and building a life that feels more like your own.
I’m not writing from some mountaintop where I have everything figured out.
Quite the opposite. I’m writing from the middle.
And I think the middle is where many of us actually live; the messy middle
We tend to tell our lives in neat little chapters: journalist, entrepreneur, expat, coach.
But living them is rarely that tidy.
There are stretches of uncertainty. Decisions you second-guess. Things you outgrow before you know what you want instead. Seasons when you aren’t sure whether to persevere or move on.
And sometimes there is grief involved in changing your life. Even when you know something isn’t right anymore, you can still mourn the version of your life you’re leaving behind.
This is something I want to explore in this column.
Because I don’t believe every season of dissatisfaction means you need to blow up your entire life. Sometimes you don’t need a new life. You need a new chapter.
What do you actually want?
The language of reinvention can make us think we need to quit the job, move somewhere new or completely start over.
Sometimes we do. But before making a dramatic change, perhaps we should ask: What is actually working in my life?
Maybe your career doesn’t need to disappear. Maybe you need a new challenge or better boundaries. Maybe you’ve simply lost touch with the woman you were before everyone needed something from you. Maybe you don’t need to become a completely different person. Maybe you need to become more fully yourself.
So rather than asking, “What should I do with my life?” try asking: “What do I want my next chapter to look and feel like?”
What do you want more of? Less of? What have you been tolerating that you no longer want to tolerate? What dreams keep resurfacing?
And perhaps most importantly: Who are you becoming?
Your next chapter isn’t only about what you accomplish. It’s about who you become while you’re building it.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. I have learned through my own reinventions—and through working with women in goal setting workshops and coaching groups —that clarity often comes through movement.
You take a step. You learn something. You change your mind. You adjust. You keep going.
That isn’t failure. That’s life.
So perhaps the goal isn’t to figure out your entire future before you begin. Perhaps it’s simply to get curious about what might be possible next.
That is what I hope She Builds Again will be about: the questions we don’t always have time to ask ourselves, the decisions we’re afraid to make, the dreams we’ve quietly put away, and the practical steps involved in building a life that feels more like our own.
Because you don’t have to burn your old life to the ground to create something new.
Sometimes you simply turn the page, and begin again.
Welcome to She Builds Again.
- Nadia Laws is a coach focused on helping women navigate life transitions, find clarity and build what’s next. If you’re wondering what your next chapter could look like, start with her free Rebuild Clarity Audit here: she-builds-again-ppqatn.subscribepage.io.
