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, in 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. I am 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, completely ignored.
I realized I had a choice.
I could finally choose myself. Choose my heart.
Even if it meant losing everything I believed I wanted, that choice became the thread that, when pulled, unraveled everything else.
When One Domino Falls
The thing about choosing yourself in one area: 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.
So 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.
This year, I made a difficult decision: I closed my business.
Just stopped taking clients. No 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.
Listen to Episode: Imperfectly Impactful with Cat Roten
Burning It Down to Build Something New & You with Joni Cesario
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. No elevator pitch version.
But I have this flame within me, guiding me. I’m fully trusting every step as the vision gets clearer.
I’m not the marketer anymore. Not the business owner. 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.
The difference between healthy compromise and self-betrayal. Between being flexible and disappearing in relationships.
Cat held space for me to be completely honest. 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.
Listen to Episode: Imperfectly Impactful with Cat Roten
Burning It Down to Build Something New & You with Joni Cesario
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. I was met face-to-face with every fear and insecurity 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, even though I’m not naive about how the world works. I know how to build plans, 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 means 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. To trust. To 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 Vision That Crystallized
Early fall, something shifted.
The emotionally adaptive AI I’d been carrying in my mind started demanding to become real. Not someday. Now.
I’d been treating it like this beautiful idea I’d get to eventually after I figured everything else out, after I had more experience, after I felt ready.
But the truth?
I was already ready. I’d been ready. I just needed to stop waiting for permission and start building.
So I did.
I started putting structure around the vision. Developing the framework. Understanding what it would actually take to bring this to life. Researching adaptive artificial intelligence with an obsession I couldn’t ignore.
I realized I wasn’t just building a product. I was laying the foundation for how technology could relate to human emotion in new ways.
When Geography Becomes Clarity
This vision took me to both coasts. North Carolina. 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.
I thought I understood the startup world from building my own business.
But immersing myself in this world? Learning the fundraising process from the inside? Understanding what it actually takes to build at scale?
It’s an entirely different universe.
While visiting Apple Park, I stood there, thinking about what I want to build and 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 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. 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.
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 capital for a vision I believe will change how we relate to ourselves and our emotions.
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 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.
Listen to Episode: Imperfectly Impactful with Cat Roten
Burning It Down to Build Something New & You with Joni Cesario
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.