How Many Versions of Yourself Can Be Real at Once? Personal Identity Evolution.

I’ve been questioning myself a lot lately.

I’m in one of the most significant periods of transition I’ve experienced in my life and career, and for a while I’ve been using the word retirement to describe it.

Except the more I think about it, the more I realise that isn’t what I’m doing.

I’m not retiring.

I’m evolving.

And there’s an important difference.

Retirement suggests an ending. Evolution acknowledges that whatever comes next has been shaped by everything that came before it.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed standing still. Remaining in stagnant situations feels uncomfortable to me. Going backwards feels worse. I’ve always been interested in movement, growth, learning, understanding and discovering what else might be possible.

But evolution also requires something we don’t talk about nearly enough.

Looking backwards.

Not because we want to return there, but because understanding who we’ve been can tell us an extraordinary amount about who we’re becoming.

Who were you before you became who you are now?

The past few years have been particularly challenging for me personally, but they’ve also produced some of the greatest periods of growth and self-understanding I’ve experienced.

I’ve had to ask myself difficult questions.

Who am I?

What do I actually want?

Where am I going?

What am I doing simply because I’ve always done it?

What no longer fits?

And perhaps most interestingly:

How much of my identity did I consciously choose, and how much developed because of the environments I found myself in?

I’ve had an unusual number of identities during my career.

Model.

Actress.

Glamour model.

Businesswoman.

Artist.

Producer.

Studio owner.

Entrepreneur.

Creator.

Writer.

Dominatrix.

Goddess Becky.

Before any of those existed, there was office junior Becky, sales assistant Becky and office manager Becky.

None lasted particularly long.

I discovered quite quickly that conventional office life wasn’t for me.

I could do it. I could even do it well.

I just couldn’t imagine spending my life doing the same thing every day.

I wanted more.

At the time, I couldn’t have explained what more meant.

Eventually I simply left and went looking for it.

I had no grand plan. I didn’t know what I was doing.

I just did it.

There’s a particular kind of freedom in youth that you don’t fully appreciate until you have considerably more responsibilities. You can leap before you’ve calculated every possible landing.

And that leap became the beginning of more than twenty-five years of exploration.

Which one was the real me?

Looking back across all those identities has left me with an interesting question.

Which one was actually me?

The answer I’ve arrived at is perhaps less satisfying than discovering some hidden “true self.”

All of them were me.

Some were amplified.

Some were professional.

Some existed partly for entertainment.

Some developed because I needed them.

Some have disappeared.

Some became stronger.

Some I’m only now beginning to understand.

But none represents the entirety of who I am.

And neither does the woman writing this now.

We tend to talk about authenticity as though somewhere underneath everything is one pristine, permanent version of ourselves waiting to be uncovered.

I’m increasingly unconvinced.

Perhaps we’re more complicated than that.

Think about yourself.

Who are you at work?

Who are you with your parents?

Your closest friends?

A lover?

Strangers?

Who are you online?

Who are you when you’re completely alone and nobody wants anything from you?

You probably behave slightly differently in every environment.

Does that make any of those versions fake?

I don’t think it does.

Different environments illuminate different parts of us.

Sometimes the mask contains something real

One particular identity has made me think about this more deeply than any other.

Goddess Becky.

People have asked me many times over the years:

“What’s the real Becky like?”

It’s an interesting question because it assumes Goddess Becky can’t possibly be her.

But she is.

She’s just not all of her.

There are aspects of Goddess Becky that have been deliberately amplified. That’s inevitable when creating entertainment, fantasy and a public persona.

But the raw materials were real.

The independence.

The authority.

The sexuality.

The curiosity.

The fascination with human behaviour.

The intensity.

The standards.

The confidence.

The desire to understand people.

They’re mine.

What’s particularly interesting is that the relationship between person and persona hasn’t only travelled in one direction.

I created her.

But after inhabiting an identity for more than two decades, I have to ask:

Did she also create parts of me?

Perhaps we sometimes build identities before we’ve fully grown into them.

A persona can become a place in which we practise qualities we haven’t yet learned to comfortably inhabit elsewhere.

Confidence.

Boundaries.

Authority.

Expression.

Eventually we don’t need to put the costume on to access them anymore.

They’ve become part of us.

Evolution isn’t rejection

That’s why I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the language we use around reinvention.

We’re constantly encouraged to become a “new you.”

Kill the old identity.

Leave the old version behind.

Reinvent yourself.

I’m not sure I want to.

There are women I’ve been that I wouldn’t want to become again.

But there are things about every one of them I want to keep.

I don’t want the wisdom I have now if it costs me my capacity for excitement.

I don’t want boundaries if they become walls.

I don’t want discernment if it becomes cynicism.

I don’t want independence if it means becoming incapable of receiving support.

I don’t want strength if maintaining it requires pretending I’m never vulnerable.

And I don’t want maturity to erase the woman who once looked at the world and thought:

Why not? Let’s see what happens.

Perhaps evolution isn’t about continuously replacing ourselves.

Perhaps it’s integration.

Taking the courage from one version.

The wisdom from another.

The mistakes.

The scars.

The curiosity.

The boundaries.

The softness.

The ambition.

The ridiculous stories.

And consciously deciding what deserves to continue.

Maybe we never finish becoming

I’m not particularly interested in discovering my “final form.”

That sounds terribly boring.

I hope there are sides of myself I haven’t met yet.

I hope I change my mind about things.

I hope life gives me experiences that challenge some of what I currently believe.

I hope I’m wise enough to admit when I’ve been wrong.

And I hope I’m brave enough to evolve when something that once fitted me beautifully no longer does.

Because staying the same simply to remain recognisable to other people is a strange way to spend a life.

Perhaps becoming yourself isn’t about eventually uncovering one definitive identity.

Perhaps it’s understanding all the people you’ve been well enough to consciously choose who gets to influence the person you’re becoming.

So which version of me is the real Becky?

The glamour model?

The businesswoman?

The Goddess?

The writer?

The woman at home with her dog when nobody is watching?

All of them.

Just don’t mistake any one of them for the whole woman.

Stay curious.

Goddess Becky xo

Still curious?

If this made you question which versions of yourself you've been — and which ones you're still becoming — my newsletter is where I continue these conversations.

I write about identity, psychology, human behaviour, personal evolution and the questions that rarely have simple answers.

Join the newsletter and come a little further down the rabbit hole.

Stay curious for longer