Becoming
The permission slip nobody gave you — and the one only you can write
I have been becoming my whole life.
I just didn’t always know that’s what it was called.
For a long time, I called it searching. Restlessness. The quiet, persistent feeling that there was a version of me just slightly out of reach — more alive, more free, more fully herself than the woman I was performing on any given Tuesday.
I traveled the world looking for her. I earned degrees trying to deserve her. I built careers hoping they would finally introduce me to her.
And somewhere in all of that doing, all of that achieving, all of that becoming for everyone else — I finally had to stop and ask the question that cracked everything open:
Who was I before the world told me who to be?
Here is what I know about the moment you arrive on this earth:
You came in complete.
Not as a blank slate waiting to be written on. Not as raw material waiting to be shaped into something useful.
Complete. Whole. Already encoded with everything you would need for the life that was specifically, uniquely, cosmically yours.
Your gifts were already there. Your desires were already there. Your purpose — the particular frequency you were sent here to vibrate at — is already present, already alive, already yours.
And then the world got involved.
And the world, with the very best of intentions, handed you a different roadmap.
It handed you rules. Expectations. Safe paths and approved directions. It handed you other people’s definitions of success, other people’s timelines, other people’s versions of who a woman like you was supposed to become.
And because you were loved, and because you loved them back, you followed the map.
You were obedient. You were responsible. You were good.
You played it safe because you were told that living full out would create havoc. That wanting too much was dangerous. That the woman who followed her own compass, who trusted her own knowing, who refused to shrink herself into someone else’s comfort zone — that woman was a problem.
So you became manageable instead of magnificent.
And you called it wisdom.
I have lived on multiple continents. I have sat in classrooms and boardrooms and healing circles and late-night kitchens in countries where nobody knew my name or my history or what I was supposed to be.
And every single time I stripped away the expectations — the ones I inherited, the ones I earned, the ones I quietly accepted without anyone asking if I agreed — I found her.
The woman I came here to be.
She was never lost.
She was just waiting underneath everything I had been told to become instead.
I became a professor. An instructional designer. A strategist. A DEI professional. A good daughter, a reliable friend, a woman who showed up and delivered and never made it too complicated for the room.
All of it is real. All of it is meaningful.
And none of it is the full picture.
Because becoming — real becoming — is not about adding more credentials to who you already are.
It is about having the courage to shed what was never actually yours.
There is a question I believe lives inside every woman of a certain age. You might not say it out loud. You might have learned to quiet it before it gets too loud. But it is there, in the still moments, in the transition spaces, in the gap between who you have been and who you feel yourself reaching toward:
How do I become everything I desire to be?
Not everything I was trained to be. Not everything that makes everyone comfortable. Not the version of me that fits neatly into someone else’s expectations.
Everything I desire to be.
That question is not a midlife crisis.
That question is your becoming activating.
Here is what nobody tells you about becoming:
It is not a destination.
It is a process, ongoing, nonlinear, sometimes uncomfortable, always alive.
Becoming is what happens when you stop outsourcing the authorship of your life to everyone who has an opinion about it and start writing from the inside out.
It requires something most of us were never taught to practice:
Permission.
Permission to want what you want without a committee vote. Permission to follow the thread of your own desire, even when it doesn’t make logical sense to everyone watching. Permission to trust that the roadmap you were born with — the one written into your particular genius, your specific gifts, your irreplaceable way of moving through the world — is more valid than any map someone handed you.
Permission to become who you came here to be.
Not who you were shaped to be. Not who was convenient for everyone else.
Who you came here to be.
I want to live a life where my end justifies the means.
Not a life that looked good from the outside. Not a life that impressed the room. A life where I arrived at the finish line — breathless, grateful, satisfied — and said:
I did it. I actually lived. On my own terms. As myself. Fully.
That is the only version of this life I am willing to accept now.
And I want that for you, too.
Not someday. Not after you’ve satisfied every obligation and met every expectation and finally permitted yourself when there is nothing left to give.
Now.
Because becoming doesn’t wait for the right time.
Becoming happens in the moments you choose yourself — even when it’s inconvenient, even when it’s unfamiliar, even when the people who love you don’t quite understand it yet.
You came into this lifetime with everything you needed.
The world has spent years adding weight to that. Expectations. Rules. Other people’s fears dressed up as advice.
Becoming is the sacred act of setting that weight down.
Not in one dramatic moment. Not in a single retreat or a breakthrough session or an essay you read on a Thursday morning.
In the daily, deliberate, deeply personal practice of choosing you.
Choosing your desires. Choosing your truth. Choosing the woman you came here to be over the woman the world found most convenient.
That is Permission Development™. That is the work. That is what I have given my life to — because I refused to arrive at the end of mine having never actually lived it.
You are not too late.
You have not missed your window.
You are not too far down someone else’s road to find your own.
You are mid-becoming.
And the most extraordinary chapter of your life is the one you write when you finally stop asking for permission and realize it was always yours to give.
I’m Chà Jones — founder of Vintage 76, creator of Permission Development™, and a woman who decided that becoming was not optional. I work with high-achieving women in midlife who are ready to stop being who the world made them and start distilling into who they’ve always been. If this piece found you at the right time, come find me at vintage1976.com