365 Days Ago I Was Someone Else Entirely
From "having it all together" to having nothing but a prayer (and somehow ended up in Silicon Valley)
I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now, staring at my laptop like it might have answers it definitely doesn’t have. And I keep thinking about how wild it is that I’m even here.
A year ago, I had envisioned an entirely different future for myself. And yet, just earlier this month, I found myself walking through Apple Park headquarters in Silicon Valley—still struggling to believe this is really my life now.
Listen to Episode: Imperfectly Impactful with Cat Roten
Burning It Down to Build Something New & You with Joni Cesario
The Pattern I Finally Broke
My entire life, I’ve lived for everyone but myself.
I’ve done everything I thought I was supposed to do simply because that’s how I thought life worked. Go to college. Get the job. Build the business. Be the good girl. Make everyone comfortable. Keep the peace.
You know that moment when you realize you’re shrinking yourself to fit into someone else’s version of who you should be? When you notice you’re getting quieter, smaller, hoping that maybe this time it’ll work?
I’ve done that dance my entire life. Not just in romantic relationships. In friendships and business. In every dynamic where I thought love was conditional on my not needing too much.
But something shifted this year. Maybe I’d just done it enough times to finally recognize the choreography. Maybe I was just tired of performing and pretending I didn’t know how it would end.
My body started talking louder than my mind could rationalize away. That familiar feeling of disappearing into someone else’s needs while mine sat quietly and completely ignored.
I realized I had a choice. I could finally choose myself and choose my heart.
Even if it meant losing everything I believed I wanted, that choice of choosing myself became the thread that, when pulled, unraveled everything else.
When One Domino Falls
The thing about choosing yourself in one area is that you can’t un-see all the other places you’ve been abandoning yourself.
It’s like turning on a light in a room you’ve been navigating in the dark for years.
I started taking inventory. My business that I’d fallen out of love with? I’d been taking on projects out of obligation for over a year. The identity I’d built around being “the marketer”? A mask I wore because I thought it made me legitimate, professional, the only way anyone could take me seriously.
So this year, I made a difficult decision: I closed my business. Just stopped taking clients without some elaborate exit strategy.
I know, I know... it sounds reckless. But my soul was screaming at me to stop, and for once in my life, I listened.
I chose my soul. My heart. My intuition over any strategy.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
That’s where I was when I found myself in North Carolina, last month.
Mountains in the distance, fall colors starting to shift, surrounded by people who were also in the middle of their own transformations.
I sat down with my friend Cat Roten to record an episode for her podcast, Imperfectly Impactful. It’s probably the most honest I’ve been publicly about all of this.
She asked me to introduce myself, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t have a clean answer. I held back tears because I don’t even know anymore. I had no elevator pitch version.
I have this flame within me though, guiding me. I’m fully trusting every step as the vision gets clearer.
I’m not the marketer anymore. I’m not the business owner. I’m not the person I thought I’d be by now. I just responded with a raw admission: I’m just me. In the middle. And I’m learning that’s okay.
What We Talked About
We talked about relationships. The pattern of self-abandonment I’d been repeating and how I finally broke it. About closing my business and learning to trust something bigger than my need for control.
We talked about what it actually looks like to burn your life down and start over. The real version, where some days you feel like you’re finally becoming yourself and other days you wonder if you’ve completely lost your mind.
We talked about the difference between healthy compromise and self-betrayal. Between being flexible and disappearing in relationships.
Cat held space for me to be completely honest. Just the beautiful truth of what it looks like to choose yourself after a lifetime of choosing everyone else.
We talked about what I’m building now. The emotionally adaptive AI. All of it.
The Terror of Trusting
The first few weeks after I made this massive shift were some of the scariest times of my life. My safety net no longer existed, and I was met face to face with every fear and insecurity all at once. I had nothing but prayer.
Just this feeling in my body that wouldn’t go away. This knowing that if I could stay present, keep trusting my intuition, everything would align in ways I couldn’t orchestrate or control.
I feel insane saying this out loud because I’m not naive about how the world works. I know how to build plans and hit milestones and forecast outcomes. I grew up quickly and learned how to fend for myself. And here I was, burning my entire life down with nothing but a vision and a prayer.
But I was learning something deeper: sometimes trust looks like releasing control. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop forcing outcomes and start being present for the unfolding.
I had to learn to wait, trust, and believe that the doors meant for me would open when I was ready to walk through them.
This was my Hail Mary, really. And then the doors started opening.
The Connection That Arrived
Early fall. A friend connected me with a mutual friend. Just a casual introduction, one I didn’t think anything of. “Hey, you and this founder should connect. You’re both building something in the AI space.”
I decided to get on a call with her, thinking maybe we could navigate the startup world together so neither of us had to do it alone. Within five minutes of talking to her, I knew we’d be friends.
The Alignment
Her vision for technology and human connection was so aligned with what I’d been carrying that it felt like finding someone who speaks the same rare language. We started finishing each other’s sentences. Building on each other’s ideas. Seeing possibilities neither of us could see alone.
Long story short, she asked if I’d be open to working together on her pitch deck for raising capital.
I said yes. Now I’m working with her to raise capital. She’s put her trust in me, her vision in my hands, and I’m pouring everything I know into helping her bring it to life.
I can see my own vision woven into this work. The emotionally adaptive AI I’ve been carrying isn’t separate from what we’re building. It’s integrated. By collaborating instead of trying to build everything alone, I’m actually accelerating what I came here to create.
Working with her and two other brilliant humans to build something that could genuinely change how people relate to their emotions.
When Geography Becomes Clarity
Working with Ariana has had me fly to both coasts: North Carolina and Silicon Valley.
Walking streets where people are building companies that will shape the next decade. Sitting in coffee shops listening to conversations about what technology could become if we built it with intention instead of just velocity.
Meeting people who have decades more experience than I do in startups and tech. Learning at a pace that makes my brain hurt in the best way.
A Different Universe
I thought I understood the startup world from building my own business. But being here? Working this closely with a founder? Watching the fundraising process unfold from the inside?
It’s an entirely different universe.
While visitng Apple Park, I stood there thinking about what I want to build, what I want to grow this vision into, and I couldn’t stop smiling. Pure possibility.
Since leaving Silicon Valley, it's become undeniably clear that this place is calling me. It’s like a deep, body-knowing way where you realize you need to be somewhere because it’s where your next chapter lives.
Why I’m Considering the Move
It’s about creating a space where I can focus on my next chapter of stability and self-discovery. Being there, I truly find myself. My breathing becomes calmer, and my nervous system feels more at ease. Very different than when I’m in Arizona.
So I’m considering the move to the Bay Area. Yes, another pivot. Another leap into the unknown while trusting what my body knows before my mind catches up.
What I’ve Actually Learned About Choosing Myself
I thought choosing myself would feel empowering. Liberating. Like finally coming home to who I was always meant to be. And sometimes it does feel like that. But mostly? It feels disorienting. Like walking through fog without a map, trusting that the path will reveal itself one step at a time.
The Real Cost
Choosing myself has meant sitting with the discomfort of not being understood. It’s meant watching relationships fade because I’m no longer willing to pretend I’m smaller than I am. It’s meant holding my boundaries even when it would be easier to collapse them.
I will no longer shrink to make people comfortable. And I certainly will no longer abandon my needs to prove I deserve love.
I am love. And so are you.
I’m learning what it feels like to be fully myself without apologizing for it.
What’s Unfolding Now
I’m still in the middle of this. Still figuring it out one day at a time.
I have a giant goal that still blows my mind: raise $2.2 million or a vision I believe will change how we relate to ourselves and our emotions.
The Unexpected Path
I didn’t know:
I’d be working with a startup and raising capital.
I’d walk through Apple’s headquarters.
I’d ever consider moving to California.
I’d find a collaboration that feels so deeply aligned.
I just knew I couldn’t keep living a life built for the version of me who thought she had to be small to fit in.
Today, my life has become this series of “how the heck is this even happening” moments strung together by faith and action in equal measure.
Where You Come In
The podcast episode I mentioned? That’s where the vulnerability lives that I can only access in real-time conversation. The nuance that gets lost in writing.
Until next time,
🖤 Joni @ The Rebirth Files
Want to connect? Send me a message on Instagram.
P.S. If this resonates, forward it to someone who needs permission to choose themselves. Sometimes that’s all we need: permission.