Who Are You When the Roles Fall Away?
How to rediscover who you are beyond the roles you play with Maria Newman.
Most of us can list our roles without hesitation. Mum, partner, employee, carer, friend. What takes longer to answer is who we are underneath them. If one of those roles ended tomorrow, through redundancy, an empty nest, retirement or divorce, would you still recognise the person left standing? It is a question many of us quietly avoid, and it sits at the heart of this conversation.
In Episode 76 of the Writing with Purpose podcast, I'm joined by Maria Newman, a certified NLP Master Practitioner, hypnotherapist, coach and author who has spent nearly a decade helping working mums rediscover who they are beyond the roles they play.
Maria left a long-standing career at Rolls-Royce in 2016 while on maternity leave, built a coaching practice from the ground up, wrote two books, founded the YaaMas networking community and launched her own podcast, Rising from the Rubble. Her story is one of stepping into the unknown and finding solid ground there, and our conversation offers a gentle challenge to anyone who suspects they have been living on autopilot, or has lost sight of themselves inside the busyness of everyday life.
The Roles We Mistake for Ourselves
Maria knows first-hand how completely a role can absorb an identity. As she points out, the moment you become a mum, the label is reinforced everywhere you go. At baby groups, you stop having a name and become Leah's mum or Luca's mum. Over time, we take the label in so deeply that letting go of it feels like losing ourselves.
The same is true of any long-held role. Maria describes the moment so many women eventually face: "The role I was playing, which is who I thought I was, doesn't exist anymore." It might arrive when children leave home, when a career ends, or when caring responsibilities fall away. If our sense of self has been built entirely on what we do for others, that moment can feel like standing in an empty room.
Her answer is a reordering rather than a rejection of our roles. We are individuals first, and the roles come second. "It's not selfish to think of yourself as an individual to meet your own needs," she says, drawing on the familiar wisdom of the aeroplane oxygen mask. When you know who you are and what you stand for, you build a foundation that holds steady, whatever role you happen to be playing that day. Decisions come more easily. Time alone stops feeling uncomfortable. And when a role does end, you are still there.
When Life Turns the Page
A lovely moment in our conversation came from revisiting Maria's favourite childhood book, Back Home by Michelle Magorian. It tells the story of Rusty, a girl sent to America during the war who returns to an England that feels restricted and unfamiliar. For Maria, the story captures how life transitions feel. We move from knowing the rules to suddenly not knowing them, from freedom to uncertainty, and the discomfort of that in-between space is entirely human.
Maria's own biggest transition began with a car journey early in her career, when a senior manager described his life in one tidy line that ended with a pension too good to leave. She promised herself she would never feel stuck like that. Fifteen years later, she realised she was becoming that person, and chose to leave without a fixed plan, trusting that she would find her way.
Her second book, Your Next Chapter, distils what she has learned about navigating these turning points into a practical, prompt-led guide. The starting point is always acceptance. "If you don't accept your current situation, it doesn't matter how hard you try to move forward, you'll always be pulled back." From there, the work becomes imagining what the new life could look like, then taking small, manageable steps towards it. Not a leap, just a page turning.
Waking Up from Autopilot
There is a chapter in Maria's first book, Busy!, called Are You Sleepwalking Through Life? She describes it like a long drive you have done a hundred times, where you arrive without remembering the journey. "It's when you look back at the end of the day and you just think today's been a bit of a blur."
Around 90 per cent of what we do, Maria explains, is run by the unconscious mind. Routine carries us from breakfast to bedtime while our conscious attention is elsewhere. Her remedy is refreshingly small: break the pattern. Ask whether you actually want cereal this morning. Take a different route to work. Walk instead of drive. Each tiny disruption is a moment of conscious choice, and those moments add up to a day you were wholly present for.
Maria also warns of what happens when we stop choosing. Comfort zones shrink with age unless we keep stretching them, and she recalls her father-in-law admitting that booking a flight, once effortless, had started to worry him. Her encouragement is to "keep pushing... the walls of the comfort zone out so that you don't end up becoming this person you don't recognise anymore." Nothing dramatic is required. Try a new food, a new route, a weekend away. Small acts of newness keep our world wide.
Coming Back to Yourself in Nature
When clients are struggling, Maria recommends three things: have a good cry, sit in nature, and talk to somebody. The middle one will resonate with every nature lover in this community. "You can do so many things in nature just to bring yourself back to yourself and to find that quietness, that stillness that you're looking for," she says.
Her favourite doorway in, is mindful walking. “What can you feel underfoot? What can you see and hear?” Because the brain can only truly focus on one thing at a time, tuning into butterflies, trees or the texture of the sky quietens the unhelpful noise and gives the nervous system a chance to settle. And nature asks nothing of us in return. Step out of your front door and there are hanging baskets, birds overhead, and the sky itself. It’s free, it’s close, and it’s always there.
Your Turn: A Letter from Your Future Self
Of all the practices Maria shared, one feels made for your journal. When we feel stuck, she explained, we cannot see past what is happening right now. Writing a letter from your future self breaks that door open, because it borrows the perspective of the person you are becoming rather than the person who feels trapped. It also draws on the belief running through this whole conversation, that the answers we seek are already within us.
Find a quiet moment, and begin with these sentence stems to warm up:
• The roles I play in my life are...
• Underneath those roles, I am someone who...
• The chapter of life I am in right now feels like...
Then write the letter. Imagine yourself one or two years from now, living on the other side of whatever feels uncertain today. Write to your present self from that place. Describe where you are, how your days feel, what you no longer worry about, and what you would like your present self to know. Don't plan the route from here to there. Simply describe the destination in positive, specific detail.
When you have finished, seal it or tuck it away, and make a note to open it when the time feels right. Let it wait for you.
An Invitation
Roles will come and go throughout our lives, and each transition will ask us the same question in a different voice: Who are you, underneath it all? Perhaps the kindest thing we can do is start answering before life asks.
Want to explore identity, life transitions and living more consciously? Listen to the full conversation with Maria Newman on Episode 76 of the Writing with Purpose podcast.