EP120: The Woman You Became This Year (Even If It Looked Like a Sh*t Show)

If 2025 has felt like a chaotic bingo card of “are you actually f*cking kidding me?” moments, this episode is going to land… in the best possible way.

Today, I’m unpacking the real story of this year.

Not the curated highlight reel.
Not the “be grateful!!” Instagram wisdom.

The actual, messy, honest truth.

For me, this was the year of:

✦ A broken arm that still hasn’t healed
✦ Five days without water in Tunbridge Wells (Crohn’s girlies… we suffered)
✦ Boil-water notices
✦ Carers washing me
✦ Money going places I did not approve of
✦ Plans derailed
✦ Tears, tantrums, breakthroughs
✦ And somehow… some of the biggest shifts of my life

This episode is an ode to polarity… how you can be held together by string and hope… and still become someone stronger, clearer, more grounded, more you.

Inside, we get into:

✨ The woman you quietly became this year

While you thought you were falling apart.

✨ Why the “sh*t show chapters” are often your origin story

And how my broken arm became the thing that cracked my entire business open in the best way.

✨ How to honour the magic in a year that didn’t look magical

Because there was magic (I’ll help you see it)

✨ My Magic Moments Jar ritua

The practice I’ve done every Sunday for three years that ALWAYS proves I did more than survive.

✨ The Marbella reflection ritual

What happens when you sit in a room of people levelling up… and you realise you already are too.

✨ Why surviving isn’t a small thing

Some years, survival is success.
Some years, holding your life together with dry shampoo and stubbornness is the work.

✨ How to close out this year prou

Even if nothing looks the way you thought it would.

This episode is your invitation to breathe, soften, and finally see the woman you became (not the one you wish you’d been, not the one Instagram told you to be)… the actual, resilient, wildly powerful woman who got you here.

You didn’t just make it through this year.

You evolved.

You f*cking smashed it.

Press play.

Let’s celebrate her

👑

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Transcript

Sarah Elizabeth  00:00

Hello, hello and welcome, welcome. Welcome to the reinvention era podcast where we take your old identity and give it a lovely shove and rebuild the bold, magnetic, unapologetic as fuck woman who's been hiding underneath. So if you're here to Grow and Glow and maybe swear a little bit and stop pretending you're fine, just fine, then pull up a pew love. I'm Sarah Elizabeth, and I'm here to sprinkle identity alchemy along with all the chrimbo glitter, because sometimes we need it, right. Okay, So picture this. Everyone online is in matching PJs, drinking hot chocolate that probably cost them 12 quid posting nice filtered reels about cosy vibes and festive magic and the like. You know me. I'm standing in Tunbridge Wells with no water. Yep, Tunbridge Wells, my actual postcode has decided to reenact the fucking sahara For Christmas with no water, not low water, not a little bit slow water, not slightly dodgy pressure water, none, zero, nada, for five whole days, five days where flushing a toilet became a strategic decision. Let me tell you, you do not realise how many times a day you go to flush the low until you can't. And if you've got Crohn's like me, darling, it's not just inconvenient. It's a whole survival situation. Forget the apocalypse. This is training. Oh, my God. Then there was a whole bottled water scenario, and with that, the boil water warning, the water isn't safe, messages about 100 times a day, the frantic water delivery driver looking at me like, How much water do you actually drink? And I'm there surrounded by crates looking like I'm about to open some black market hydration business preparing for doomsday. It was not quite the Christmas aesthetic I was aiming for. It was giving real panny D loo roll vibes, let me tell you. I mean, apparently this shit made the Prime Minister's questions and the national news fame at last. But if you're like me and don't actually watch the news or, of course, you're on in England, then let me fill you in. Basically, our water company apparently put a load of crappy chemicals in the water that were not safe as you do, so they shut the whole goddamn thing down. And the first I knew was getting home on the Saturday from my besties and a night at Wicked for good, which was beautiful, followed by an adult sleepover. I had a lovely, lovely, lovely time. And I got home and the loo didn't flush. And I'm like, what's going on? So I turn on the taps, and that nothing. And then it all started to unfold with Southeast water giving, quite frankly, very poor communication, and keep shifting the goal posts. They just kept saying, it'll come on at six o'clock at night, then six o'clock in the morning, then the next day, then the next day, it was just going on and on and on and on and on. And then they said, Oh dear, it's happened again. They fucking did it again. So they issued this boil water. Notice thing and eventually, water slowly started to come back, but we can't use it. That's what the whole boil water. Notice thing is, it's not actually safe to use, so they've given it back to us, but we can't actually fucking use it. Oh, the local Facebook groups are full of woe, with all sorts like, Oh, should you bath or shower in it? Oh, apparently it's safe too. Did you know? But not for the kids, not for pets or for people that are immunocompromised. So that's me out. Can't frickin shower or bath in it. Should we wash up in it? I mean, if it's boiled first, I ain't chance in that love. I'm boiling bottled water, darling. Thank you muchly. I'm very middle class darling of like the blokes I heard on the train. They heard these blokes on the train saying that they'd flush their loo with sparkling water from Waitrose, our very first world problems, huh? You know, you get the picture, right? It was a shit show, quite literally, with the lack of toilet flushing, Situ anyway, and yet, besides all of that, the wild bit is my default reaction wasn't actually a full on meltdown. It wasn't catastrophizing. It wasn't doing the whole why me. It was more okay. This is shit, literally, but also, wow, actually, aren't I lucky that this is a rare thing? Is it lucky I can afford bottled water? Is it lucky? I can get it delivered. Lucky that being on the priority services list, mean I got a load of bottled water delivered free. Lucky, I've got great neighbours bringing extras. Shout out, Emma and Gareth. Lucky, I have friends checking in. Luckily, I've got a warm house, even without the running water, because I've got a combi boiler. Who knew so fucking much to be blessed about. I shocked even myself. I gotta be honest, because that calm, that blessed perspective that automatic shift into gratitude, that my love is identity, work, that's reinvention, that's proof that even when the logics of life fall the fuck Apart, my internal scaffolding is actually stronger than ever, and that I got there eventually with the whole backstory. But that is what today's episode is about, the whole December wobble, the year end identity audit. The Holy shit. Who even Am I now? Spiral and the good bits you're doing better than you think. You have grown more than you realise this year, and sometimes messy, inconvenient chaos is really showing you who you've become. How cool is that? Let's get proper into it. Now I've given you an extended background. Do you know what surprised me the most about the whole Watergate shituation? This is what I'm calling it. Now obvs. What I ended up taking from it. I handled it like a woman with decent nervous system capacity, like someone who's been doing the inner work, like someone who doesn't fucking unravel the second life stops playing nicely. And this is totally, totally unlike the Sarah of 2020, when covid hit. Because, believe me, this was not always the case. Old me would have been what would old me have been doing? I'd have been stomping around the kitchen, moaning and muttering under my breath. I'd have been catastrophizing about civilization collapsing. What is this world coming to I'd be Googling, can humans survive on diet coke alone? Do you know, you know that that was old me? I'd I'd have been the victim. I'd have been the worst in the situation. I'd have been like, Why me? All of that shit. That's what old me would have been like. But knew me, who is the woman I've been intentionally becoming? Well, really the last few years, but definitely this whole year, this me took a bit of a beat, good breath. Yes, she did, and put it down quickly. I jump to gratitude. And listen, I don't

Sarah Elizabeth  09:47

say that to be smug. I really don't. It's fucking hard. It is like especially for the families with little ones, for the elderly, for those with medical conditions, it's not easy. It's not no it. Isn't I'm not saying that and southeast water have been absolutely fucking appalling in their comms about it all, really awful. But what I am saying is, despite that, I'm telling you about this evolution in my reactions, because it made me realise that identity shifts in who we are now actually show up in the smallest, most ridiculous moments. It's not always like on the mountaintop at sunrise. It's not going to be always in the breakthrough mammoth journaling sessions, not in the hundreds of pretty Instagram quotes you've saved on your phone. But instead it's in those tiny, micro moments of inconvenience, of interruption, of discomfort, of absolute freaking day to day chaos. This is where you see who you are now, not who you were in January. That instinctive jump to perspective in the middle of all the crap that is identity, working motion that is reinvention. That's the evidence you never see coming. Those tiny, micro moments where you suddenly realise, you suddenly notice, oh, hang on, I don't respond like the old me anymore. And that's what I'm talking about, the messiness, the miracles, the identity shifts, hiding inside a year that tested the absolute shit out of you. You know, like we said last week, December's the month where your entire past self and your entire future self get into a bit of a scrap. Quite honestly, your brain starts going, have you done enough? Are you where you're supposed to be? Are you even the same person you were in January? Are you falling behind? Should you have reinvented your whole life by now? You know, it's like a whole emotional buffet, and most of it served fucking gold, because December isn't just the end of the year. It's like this identity checkpoint, exactly what we talked about in that last episode, you can't help but reflect on who you were and who you became, and who you're becoming next, and all of that wobbling about that, the wobble, the shift, that shit is normal. It's universal. I think it's part of the human contract, if you like. But also this year, what I'm saying is your wobble might also feel a bit different, in a good way, because this year, even in your darkest, weirdest, most inconvenient moments, you've learned things about yourself you didn't see coming. You know, a couple of weeks back, we also talked about the law of polarity, like how everything comes in a pair and that duality, and how emotion, that energy, emotion, lives on a spectrum, right? But don't you think it's real power when you start to see polarity in the actual mess of your real life, like this is annoying, and I'm lucky, I'm frustrated and I'm okay, this is exhausting, and I'm result enough to handle it that's not toxic positivity. That's just the way it is. Polarity doesn't ask you to deny the shit. It just asks you to notice the blessings sitting right next to it. And December's like, I don't know, I think it's like the perfect storm for this, because, like we've said, December's when all the old identities rattle up, when expectations can bile up, when family triggers are going constantly, and all that end of year pressure kicks in, and the comparison gets louder, And you suddenly doubt absolutely everything about your whole life, which means it's also actually the perfect time to notice the contrast as well to look at who you were last December versus who you are now, even if you don't feel it yet, even if your life still feels messy and up in the air. Even if things didn't go to plan, you still changed. You know. Let's talk about my broken arm era, for example. Given that's pretty much shaped after my year, the other big thing to Watergate that's just defining this year. I. Actually, woodsgate wasn't that big a thing, but my arm has been a big thing, right this year, the arm, the broken arm, the surprise plot twist to the absolute fuckery of it all. Oh, my God, you know, if you didn't know, in June, life absolutely blindsided me. I broke my arm, and I mean, properly broke. It not a cute little crack, not a quirky Oh, look at me in a sling, although I did find myself a cute pink sling. But anyway, it wasn't just a little crack, a little fracture, not a tiny fracture. It was a big traumatic note from the skeleton. God sent him behind me. Six months later, I still haven't healed. I'm still needing a pretty major operation to bring in 2026 I still haven't been able to drive. I've had to rely on carers. I've had to ask for help, which, as an extreme, hyper independent is my absolute worst nightmare. Let me tell you, I've cried alone in hospital waiting rooms. I have sat in a doing the whole Why me, and at the same time thinking, how the hell is my life? You know, it's been six months of pain and inconvenience and a huge financial impact, exhaustion, a whole massive identity crisis, hospital appointments, waiting lists and constantly thinking, surely it's healing by now, only to be told, No, no, it's not. It's been hard, but you know what? And and it showed me some shit. It forced me, literally forced me to slow down enough to see my entire life, almost like with new eyes. I couldn't run an autopilot, I couldn't stay distracted. I couldn't keep muscling and hustling through like I usually did, and in that enforced stillness, I finally admitted to myself like I didn't want to keep doing my business the way I've been doing it. I don't want to be the divorced woman anymore. I love being divorced, but I don't want to be known as the divorced woman anymore. I want to reinvent. I want to write, I want to speak, I want to step into the woman I've been imagining for fucking years, and I've hidden away, you know, yes, it cracked my humerus. Yeah, it really bloody did. That's the bone I broke humerus. It's not fucking funny, but, you know, it cracked my humerus, but it also, and it cracked my identity wide open. It made space. It gave me clarity. It made my truth get louder. I admitted what I want. I didn't choose the broken arm. Fuck me No, but it chose me for a reason, and it turns out, it changed everything for the better, not immediately and definitely not gracefully at all, not because I chose it, but because it's forced me to ask me what I really want moving forward. Would I have reinvented my brand without that break? Probably not. Would I have given myself permission to pivot. Unlikely. Would I have given myself permission to rest? Absolutely not. Would I have carved out space to map out my next five years? Definitely not. Yes, the year broke my arm, but it's also broke the version of me that was taking too much shit, tolerating too much. It's that polarity again, you know, it's been shit and salvation. It's been pain and purpose, disruption and direction. One I heard this week, the dive before the Thrive. How lovely is that? The dive before the thrive. I mean, thanks universe. It wasn't quite the delivery method I'd have chosen, but message received and under Search, you know, and that's much like covid as well. I wouldn't have chosen that, but as it turns out, it's been life changing for me, for the better. I know it's been hard for so many people,

Sarah Elizabeth  19:44

and it was hard for me. I'm not making out like it was piece of piss, because it wasn't, but when I look back, it's been life changing for the better, like when I've been able to see the gold in it as well, not only in the changes to my identity and my business, but also. Again, even the small blessings, like, like, one of my best is Gem she left a client in the hairdresser's chair to come to my rescue and making sure I was the way before, like, going back. And then she worked with Jo and Danny to get my car back and get me to hospital and get me home and all of it. Another bestie Collette, she came to stay for the first couple of days to help me out. My son and his gorgeous wife and my gorgeous grandchildren, they all appeared to surprise me the next day like the best surprise ever, giving me the hugs, one armed hugs I desperately needed, and immediately they then got to rearranging my whole house to adapt to my new needs. That was all within 24 hours. And again, too, I'm so thankful for shit like that. I can pay for carers, I can get taxis and frames. I can pretty much get everything delivered. My local NHS Hospital has been bloody amazing. I've got so much to be thankful for, all around my broken arm, but also just my life. By the time this episode comes out, I'll be Marbella with Paul Mort and the fucking unstoppable Alliance crew, which is kind of hilarious and poetic and also a little bit slightly unhinged, because the contrast could be argued to be so fucking ridiculous. Like, one minute I'm crying because I can't wash my own air, and the next minute I'm in Marbella mapping out my life and business like a woman's absolutely not available for mediocrity. That's polarity, that's duality, that's reinvention, and like at Paul morts events, we always reflect on. So we have a quarterly event, and we always reflect on the last quarter and the highs and the wins and the magic and the ship bits and our learning from the ship bits, the resilience, the lessons, and it's a really timely reminder right now that my year wasn't just defined by broken bones and no water. It was defined by who I became in the middle of all the chaos, a woman who is resilient, a woman who kept going, who kept creating, who kept evolving, who kept listening to herself, who kept choosing her future self, who kept dreaming big even when life got small. That's my real plot twist turning the crap into magic. You know, talking of magic, every Sunday, I write down my magic moments for the previous week. And I've been doing this. This is my third year now, or maybe fourth year now, of doing this right? I put every note in what I call my magic moments jar, right? I put down, like, say, every Sunday in a little post it note, thing, tiny moments, big moments, funny moments, emotional moments, moments I forget 10 minutes after they happen, hashtag menopause, moments I remember forever. And at the end of the year, I get them all out. I pour them out like treasure. And every time, every single time I cry, I cry happy tears, really happy tears, because the jar doesn't lie. The jar always, always reminds me that no matter how stressful the year felt in my head and in my life. My life was actually full of love and magic and progress and growth and surprises and blessings and proof, just moments that mattered, even in the middle of a shit year, I continue to build a beautiful life. So yeah, this December identity episodes. This isn't just about reflection and the ups and downs. It's about this one, particularly remembering who I actually was all year, irrespective of some of the low lights, not the version that my mind exaggerates. My inner critic tells me I'm fucking shit, not the version my fear invented, not the version that burnout narrated for me, but the actual version of me i. As the woman who held herself to every plot twist and still became even more her. You know, the real reflection isn't what did I achieve in 2025 it's who did I become? Old me reflected on achievements. New Me reflects on my identity. Old me wanted to know, did I do enough? New me wants to know, have I honoured who I'm becoming? So the sort of stuff I'm reflecting this year is like, where did I surprise myself, not screaming at the water situation, not being losing my shit and choosing gratitude and blessings as my default. Like what broke me? What did it open? Well, my arm broke me, but it also opened my next live chapter. What did I learn about what I want that divorce isn't my niche. Reinvention is identity is audacious. Impact is my voice is and owning that what versions of me ended in 2025 people pleaser, the one who didn't speak up, the one who hid behind professionalism fuck me, the one who waited for fucking permission, who's stepping into 2026 a woman who knows who she is, a woman who reinvents unapologetically, a woman who's building a brand, podcast, books, fucking empire, mate without squashing myself, shrinking myself to do it. And this is the part I just really want everyone to really, really hear. Please don't be measuring the usual shit that we think marks success or not, because we always tend to think about don't we like? What we didn't achieve, what went wrong, what we didn't finish, what still isn't fucking finished, what still isn't healed, what we didn't start, what we still haven't changed. But the real December reflection, the one that actually shifts your self worth, is more about who did I become? Not, What did I do? Not, What did I achieve? Not, what's ticked off the vision board. Who did you become when you had shit going down? Maybe for you, it wasn't a broken arm or no water, but maybe you can resonate with some of the other things that happened for me, like work, stress, life chaos, curve balls, exhaustion, health challenges, disappointment, unexpected endings, unexpected beginnings. Maybe it was something else, divorce, menopause, woes, money crisis. It's not about what it was. It's about who were you in the mess? Because that is what determines your next chapter. That is what shows you your identity is already shifted. That's what proves that your reinvention is happening. That's what tells you 2026 doesn't require a whole new you just more of the woman you already are and who you've already been becoming, and being proud and thankful for the growth and even the lessons. Gratitude that isn't bullshit. I want to be really clear. Gratitude is not bypassing. It's not sprinkling glitter on the shit. It's not pretending. It's not minimising, it's not at leasting yourself into silence. At least this didn't happen. At least that didn't happen. The fact that gratitude, real gratitude, is I see the shit, and I see the sacred. I see the lessons. I'm struggling and I'm supported. This is so unfair, and I'm still okay. This broke me open and built something new in me. You're allowed to hold both. You're supposed to hold both. It's how humans grow. You know,

Sarah Elizabeth  29:45

you might have seen the reel I made on Instagram last week, the one that started with this whole glamorous I've absofuckinglutely smashed all my 2025, goals vibe, and then cut to a Notes app that said my goals were basically, don't get pregnant, don't die. I, quite honestly, I think those two alone are massive achievements, but it's more than that. And in all seriousness, it is just that reminder that you don't have to have done everything, you don't have to have been perfect, you don't have to have reinvented your entire life in one freaking go. The point is momentum, sometimes staying alive in a fucking hard year is the achievement. Sometimes not giving up is the win. Sometimes recognising your blessings in the middle of absolute fucking chaos is your breakthrough. Do. So how about, over the next couple of weeks, doing your own kind of year end review, reinvention of a style. Try and have a think through some of these questions for yourself. Write them in your journal, in your notes, that on a dog walk in your head, or while you're riding in the lure a family party, whenever you like, just think about these questions, what broke you and what did it break you open to, what drained You and what did it reveal you no longer want. What shocked you and what did it shift in you? What blessings showed up disguised as absolute bullshit? Where did you respond? Differently than the old you would have? What can you finally give yourself credit for? What did you hold this year? What did you survive? What did you learn about yourself? Who are you becoming? Because maybe, just maybe, your year wasn't a failure at all. Maybe it was preparation. Maybe it was expansion disguised as chaos. Maybe it was strength disguised as overwhelm. Maybe it was clarity disguised as shit luck. Maybe it was the year you quietly became the woman next year needs you to be you don't have to have had a perfect year to be proud of the woman you became. You don't have to have ticked every girl to walk into 2026 with confidence. You don't have to have smashed it to be moving in the right direction. Sometimes doing the year is enough. Sometimes surviving it is enough. Sometimes, holding yourself through it is enough. Reinvention doesn't happen on the pretty days it happens on the What the actual fuck is going on days it happens when your arm won't heal, when your tap won't run. It happens when your job is draining the fuck out of you, or when your energy is patchy, or when life feels both too much and not enough. It happens when you realise even when everything fell apart, I didn't I held myself, I shifted, I adapted, I kept becoming you're already doing the work. You're already growing. You grow in ways you didn't even see. And I can promise you, your next era is already growing. It's already forming. That's the real gift of this holiday season, and that's the one thing I really want you to take away from today. If nothing else, I just want you to take away this one statement to hold on to fighting what happened doesn't unhappen. It I'll say that bit louder for those at the back fighting, what's happened doesn't unhappen it. We cannot control anything or anyone outside of us. We can only control what's inside of us. So as we go through this holiday season. Please, please, please hold on to that. And do share this sentiment as well with others who you know might be struggling right now with their own version of a shit show. And do let me know as well any light bulb moments you've had in this episode. Any aha moments, any reflections that really serve you and the crap you're leaving behind as we exit this year, I'd really love to know I'm a lovely I really, really would. I would. So that's a wrap for me this week. Next week, I will be back in your beauts badass earbuds for our final pre Christmas episode. So until then, I am sending you so much love. Bye.