I know, some of you are probably thinking that this word is a strange one. I think becoming is also an incredibly beautiful word.

You can use it as an adjective meaning that something is lovely, or you can use it as a noun and here, I go the high school essay route of giving you a dictionary definition: any change involving realization of potentialities, as amovement from the lower level of potentiality to the higher level of actuality. So for me, I like to think of it as a more beautiful way of looking at transitions that are positive. 

Transitioning scares me. I like order and comfort and having a plan. It’s scary to have things change, especially big changes. Somehow shifting my focus to the idea that I’m becoming helps. This perspective shift helped me with a bit of my prenatal (antepartum) anxiety because instead of thinking about the myriad of changes happening and that were going to happen, if I could shift my focus to the fact that I was “becoming a mother” everything seemed a bit more manageable. In pain while working out? You aren’t miserable, you’re just “becoming stronger” (OK, maybe both, but we’re focusing on the positive, right?)

And really, it’s a perfect word for theatre practitioners too, who are almost always in some state of flux. Even once a show is open it is still in the process of becoming that night’s show every single night. It’s the difference between theatre and film right? We get to deal with the verb form of becoming in theatrical settings all the time. Before you get to opening a show, you go from an idea becoming a script to a script becoming the basis for a production to more ideas becoming reality through the artists who translate the script from page to stage. My husband and I are in a variety of these becoming stages. We have a show open that runs this week. We have a show we are preparing to start rehearsals with. I have a show I am preparing to cast. We have a show we are just starting to write. Becoming- all these things coming into being.

More than that- I feel like we are in a time of our lives that is about a significant amount of transitioning and trying to refocus and recenter and decide what it is exactly we want to become and how we are working at becoming the people we will be in a year, or five years, or when we are grandparents.

Becoming stronger at my yoga and barre studio is made easier by these uplifting signs!

So here’s to trying to have a better attitude with all the changes in life and the curveballs. Here’s to loving where we are but looking forward to becoming what we might be. Here’s to the hottest month of the year here in Phoenix and getting through it without becoming melted puddles on the floor. (Did somebody say vacation?) Here’s to becoming stronger everyday, to becoming more patient with myself and others, and oh so much more.

What are you becoming?