Michelle Obama gifted the world with her long-awaited memoir Becoming on November 13, 2018. In the book she talks about her own journey of becoming. From her upbringing, to becoming the first African American First Lady and her transitioning from the White House. And everything else in between, her roots, her finding her voice, her stance on politics, her marriage, her struggles with infertility, her role as a mother, her short-lived career as a lawyer etc. There is a lot rolled up in this gem of a book.

This is not a review of the book. It is more about the lessons we can all learn from the former first lady and apply to our own lives. If you are curious to know how your breakup is your becoming keep reading. If you have been following the blog you will know that I am all about learning the life lessons and moving forward in life. I believe that it is our responsibility to learn the lessons that our life is showing us so that we can elevate our lives and become who we are meant to be.

What stands out to me about the book is its title, “Becoming”. I absolutely love the title of the book. It is very fitting. It’s a great metaphor for life. Everyday we are becoming who we are meant to be. Every up, down, tragedy, adversity, pain, heartache, ill, win, loss, triumph, challenge, is all part of our becoming. There is a reason and a purpose for everything we’ve been through and have experienced in our life. There are no coincidences in life. Only lessons we learn along the way. Life is all about the lessons. Our lessons show up when we most need to learn them. They don’t always come nicely gift wrapped with a bow on top. Breakups teach us lessons that we would not have learned had we not went through it. That truly is the blessing of breakups. The blessings are in the lessons.

The act of becoming implies that you are always moving, evolving, changing, and growing. If you think about it nothing in this world is constant except change. We are always changing whether we acknowledge it or not. Change is inevitable. But how you respond to those changes is what makes all the difference.

What  becoming means? For Michelle Obama “becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. She sees it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” This is so true. Our lives are about our own journey of becoming (and breakups are part of our becoming). When you think about it nothing stands still, everything is in a constant state of flow and change. Our lives are punctuated by commas until we take our last and final breath. The idea is that we never become one thing in our lifetime is such a great way to look at our lives. In fact, we become many different things along our life journey to becoming our better self. 

In the book Michelle Obama talks about failing the Bar exam. She didn’t let her failure stop her from passing it the second time around. Just how you shouldn’t let your breakup hold you back and keep you from living a great life. You see failure is temporary. The key is to fail forward and to always get back up. Failure is just feedback. Like failure, breakups are temporary in the sense that you have them, and you move on from them (eventually). Your breakup also gives you valuable feedback about yourself and your ex (that you otherwise would not have found out).

That said, it’s important to remember that you are not a failure because you had a breakup. Secondly, your breakup doesn’t define you or your life. It is a mere wrinkle in time that eventually becomes a distant blip in the grand scheme of your life. You experienced a breakup. That's it! You are not your breakup. Keep in mind, “everyone fails. It's how you address your failures that determines your successes and your accomplishments in life.” The exact same goes for breakups. The thing is if relationships were easy there would be no breakups, and subsequently no growth or change. We would die of boredom for real! We would all be stunted versions of ourselves.

Michelle Obama also talks about how a counselor told her that she was not “Princeton material”. Sure enough she got into to Princeton despite of what her counselor thought of her. She said that she "wasn't going to let one person's opinion dislodge everything she thought she knew about her self." The thing is other people’s opinion of you don’t matter. The only opinion that matters are yours and the ones you hold of yourself. Too many times we let other people’s opinions of us influence what we do and don’t do. You are no one’s definition of you. You define yourself and your life. No else has a say. How you handle and move on from your breakup is your business. No one else gets to weigh in on that unless you give them permission to. You do your breakup your way.

In many ways your breakup is your becoming. Your breakup may seem like it’s an ending, but it really is a beginning, a moving forward, an opportunity for growth and for upleveling your life. Think of it as a bettering of yourself and purging the people who are not a good fit for you.

You move on from your breakup. You had a breakup, next! The thing is it is not just a becoming, but it is an awakening. I remember wondering to myself after my breakup where I had been for all those years. Seriously, I had truly lost myself and didn’t know who I was. Looking back I felt that for all those years I had been focused on their needs and lost sight of my own. It was the strangest feeling getting to know me again. Fast forward to today, and I can honestly say I am so grateful for my breakup and glad that I got ghosted (will dive into that in another blog). Had it not been for my breakup I would have still been disconnected from my own life and living my life on auto-pilot, people pleasing mode. 

Your breakup is an opportunity to redefine, rediscover and refine yourself. There are lessons that you can only learn from heartbreak. Your breakup has so many lessons, insights, ahas and gold nuggets for you. Like Red Bull, your breakup gives you wings to soar and find out who you are and who you want to become. Our greatest lessons come from our greatest pains. As cheesy as it sounds, your breakup matters.

In life there will be heartbreak guaranteed. Know that there is more to your life than just that. Remember you’re always in a state of becoming. Similarly, there is more to your life than your breakup. Your breakup is a temporary way of being. It’s not great. But it’s part of life. The key thing is to know that there is life after a breakup. You can’t change your past. But good news, you can choose how to live your present. Most importantly you get to create your future. That’s all you. Make the most of your life, regardless of your breakup. Enjoy your journey to your own becoming. The beauty is in the becoming, not the breakup.

My final thought...everything that we've ever been through and have experienced and will experience in our lives is part of our becoming. We are constantly and always evolving into who we are meant to be. Never forget that. Our becoming is a dynamic process. there is no one thing that we become or no one way of being. Our lives opens up into our becoming.