What & Juliet Taught Me About Reinventing My Life
Sometimes the best plot twist is the one you write yourself.
I recently went and saw the theatre production & Juliet, and I walked out feeling something I didn't expect from a jukebox musical. I felt profoundly connected to the idea of reinvention, outside the lens of society's expectations.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, the show imagines a different ending to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When Juliet wakes, instead of taking the dagger and ending her life, she puts it down. She chooses reinvention instead.
Without Romeo, she sets off across Europe, embracing new experiences, stepping outside the expectations placed on her at home. It's all wrapped up in the pop bangers of my childhood, which didn't hurt either.
I won't say much more about the plot, because I don't want to give it away. But I do want to sit with the theme underneath it, because it's one I know something about.
If you could reinvent yourself and rewrite your narrative, what would you do?
I am no Romeo and Juliet story. But after years of challenges that pushed the edges of my resilience, I have learned a thing or two about personal reinvention.
An Adult Can Still Play in Life
When I was recovering from burnout, one thing struck me hard: how small my life had become outside of work. I had almost no capacity left for anything else. My system was tired, and it showed in how little of my life was actually mine.
I didn't recognise myself in this. And that unfamiliarity is what pushed me to reflect properly on how I wanted to reimagine my life as an adult.
That reflection led me back to hobbies aligned with my interests and my community. I took up surfing, snorkelling and freediving, and more recently, creative pursuits with a small group of friends. These things made me feel adventurous again, like the version of me that used to travel the world. They also got me outside and around other people, rebuilding a sense of community that had quietly gone missing.
Life Doesn't Always Follow the Plan
This is the piece I have found hardest to navigate. I'm a woman in my mid-30s, but my spirit feels so much younger. There are moments I struggle with not having hit the milestones I once expected of myself, milestones I still want, even now.
But the truth is, we are constantly responding to life. Big things and small things, welcome and unwelcome.
In the musical, Juliet responds differently to Romeo's death than the story originally demanded of her, and in doing so, breaks free of the role literature had written for her. A plan is a good thing. It gives us direction.
But it also needs room for the uncertain, the unexpected, the unruly.
Why Goals Still Matter (Even When Life Doesn't Cooperate)
In the lead-up to my burnout, I was, for the first time in my life, a little mindless in how I was navigating things. I'm someone who is usually deliberate and determined, and I hadn't noticed that had slipped.
Now I do a quarterly check-in with the goals I have set for the year. Not to grip them tightly, but to hold space for them to evolve, change and grow as I do. Goals still matter here. They're not the whole plan, but they're the signpost, pointing me toward where I'm going and guiding me into whatever new role or chapter is next.
It's the same thing that carries Juliet through the musical. Her goal, to experience life fully and on her own terms after Romeo, becomes the driving force of the whole story. It's what lets her step into a new and unknown landscape with confidence, because she knows she's moving toward dreams she set for herself, not ones handed to her.
There's Wisdom Waiting on the Other Side of Uncertainty
This might be the hardest piece to connect with, but stay with me. Like any character in a story, Juliet, or you, or me, every time we move through something new, something difficult, we gather a little more of who we are and how we want to live.
The wisdom I have gained is knowing how strong I am, despite the waves I have come through recently, and knowing that strength will carry into whatever comes next.
It's also made me more grateful for the good things.
My relationships, my family, my health, nature, purposeful work, adventure.
Through the story, Juliet learns to embrace her true self, celebrate her imperfections, and find confidence in her own choices.
That's what real confidence is. Our challenges don't define us, but we are shaped by them, and there's a quiet kind of confidence that comes from knowing what you now know.
What Reinvention Could Look Like for You
I walked out of the theatre smiling, loving the pop songs of my childhood all over again, but also thinking bigger. About my own life, and about my clients' lives.
I won't pretend reinvention is easy, because it isn't. You're trying something new, but you're also still you. The same habits, the same instincts, the same version of yourself can show up right alongside the one you're trying to become.
That's not failure, it's just part of the process. It's why reinvention takes time. But if you stay committed to it, the shifts do come, and when they do, they can be really amazing.
Reinvention is always available to us, if we're willing to seek it. Choosing coaching, or choosing to make a change, is its own form of reinvention. It's choosing to move toward something that feels good for you, even if it isn't fully available yet.
A few questions worth sitting with:
If you could rewrite your own ending, what would you change?
Where in your life have you gone quiet, or small, without meaning to?
What would it look like to hold your goals with openness rather than a tight grip.
If we leaned into reinvention a little more often, I wonder what might actually become possible.