Stephanie Iken, Attorney at Law

There’s a line from the movie Rocketman that stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. A musician named Wilson looks at a young, unsure Elton John and says,

“You’ve got to kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you want to be.”

It hit something in me I didn’t want to face. At that point in my life, I was stuck in a marriage that I kept trying to fix, even though it had already drained me. I told myself that if I just loved harder or tried more, it would work. But the truth was, I wasn’t growing anymore. I was disappearing.

That quote made me realize I couldn’t keep living as the version of myself that kept everyone else comfortable. I needed to walk away, even if it meant starting over. I needed to follow the dream I had buried under years of people-pleasing and fear and to go to law school and become a lawyer.

Leaving my marriage was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it was also the beginning of finding myself again. It taught me that letting an old version of you die isn’t about failure. It’s about rebirth.

The person I was back then got me through a lot, but she wasn’t meant to stay forever. I’m grateful to her for surviving, but I’m even more grateful to finally be living.