The Question We Never Think to Ask: Lessons from the Movie Women Talking

On liberation, grieving the future we imagined, and rediscovering who we are.

“When we've liberated ourselves, we will have to ask ourselves who we are.”

— Ona, Women Talking (2022)

There is a moment in the film Women Talking that has stayed with me.

Throughout the film, a group of women in an isolated, deeply patriarchal religious community debate an extraordinary decision.

Do they stay, or do they leave?

But leaving means far more than walking away from the circumstances of their lives. It means leaving the only home they've ever known. Their families, their relationships, their sense of belonging, and a community that has defined their entire existence.

They have never known a world outside of it.

They contemplate the consequences of leaving. The risks. The uncertainty. The possibility of building lives in a world they know nothing about.

And then, late in the film, Rooney Mara's character, a pregnant young woman named Ona, asks a question that no one has asked:

“When we've liberated ourselves, we will have to ask ourselves who we are.”

The room falls silent.

And for me, that silence is one of the most powerful moments in the film.

Because these women have spent so much time considering what they should do that they haven't stopped to consider who they might be outside the only world they've ever known.

I've been thinking about how often this happens in our own lives.

Of course, the circumstances are vastly different. But the question of identity is remarkably universal.

When the Life We've Built No Longer Fits

There comes a moment in many of our lives when something changes.

Sometimes that change is imposed upon us.

A restructuring eliminates a career we've spent decades building. A marriage ends. Our children leave home. Circumstances shift, and suddenly the future we had imagined is no longer available to us.

Other times, the realization comes from within.

We recognize that something in the world we've built no longer serves us.

Perhaps a career that once brought enormous fulfillment now feels misaligned with our values.

Perhaps the responsibilities we've carried for years have left little room for the things that bring us joy.

Or perhaps we've simply reached a point where we can no longer ignore the quiet realization that the life we've so carefully constructed isn't necessarily the life we want to continue living.

And this can be particularly difficult when, by every external measure, that life has been successful.

Because success can make it extraordinarily difficult to question whether the life we've built is still the life we want.

We've invested years, sometimes decades, building something meaningful.

We've made sacrifices. Established relationships. Created financial security. Earned recognition. Developed an identity around the roles we've occupied and the lives we've built.

And even when we recognize that something needs to change, contemplating leaving it behind can feel overwhelming.

Because change isn't simply about what we're moving toward.

It's also about everything we may have to leave behind.

When Staying Feels Easier Than Leaving

This is another dimension of Women Talking that I find so compelling.

The women aren't simply debating whether to leave an abusive environment.

They're contemplating leaving the only world they've ever known.

And even when that world is deeply harmful, the prospect of leaving it carries enormous emotional consequences.

There are people they love. Relationships they cherish. A sense of community and belonging.

Beyond it lies the unknown.

And so they deliberate.

They question. They hesitate. They wrestle with the consequences of staying and the uncertainty of leaving.

Because sometimes, even when we recognize that something in our lives is no longer sustainable, the prospect of leaving it behind can be paralyzing.

I understand that feeling.

More than 20 years ago, I found myself contemplating the end of my marriage.

I knew something in my life had fundamentally changed. But the finality of leaving, of closing the door on the life I had built and the future I had once imagined, was extraordinarily difficult to confront.

For a long time, I struggled with that decision.

Until one morning, I woke up with a realization that changed everything.

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the circumstances I was living in.

I had changed.

My husband hadn't.

And I couldn't change myself back into the person I had once been simply to preserve a life that no longer fit.

That realization didn't make the decision painless.

But it made something clear.

I could no longer build my future by trying to return to my past.

Years later, I found myself confronting a different kind of transition.

My career.

For more than two decades, I had poured my heart, my energy, and an enormous part of my identity into building a successful career in the entertainment and media industry.

I loved the work. The people. The energy. The extraordinary experiences that came with it.

But over time, the industry began to change.

The explosion of streaming fundamentally altered traditional business models. Then COVID brought much of the production world to a standstill.

The professional landscape I had built my career around was evolving in ways I couldn't control.

And I struggled with that.

Because for a long time, I was still trying to find my place in the career I had known, rather than questioning whether that career was still the place I belonged.

It took me years to stop looking backward, trying to reconcile the career I had loved with the reality of what it had become.

I wasn't simply considering a different professional direction.

I was confronting the loss of a future I had spent decades working toward.

And that required something I hadn't fully anticipated.

Grief.

Grieving the Future That Will Never Be

There's a particular kind of grief that accompanies some of life's most significant transitions.

It's not simply grief for what we're leaving behind.

It's grief for the future we believed we were going to have.

A future we imagined, invested in, made sacrifices for, and organized our lives around.

When I contemplated leaving my marriage, I wasn't only confronting the end of a relationship.

I was confronting the loss of the life I had imagined we would share.

The years ahead. The experiences we would have. The future I had believed we were building together.

And when I eventually came to terms with the changes in my professional life, I experienced something remarkably similar.

I wasn't simply considering a different career.

I was mourning the loss of a professional future I had spent decades working toward.

In both cases, something had ended long before I was ready to let go of it.

Not necessarily the circumstances themselves, but the possibility that they could still become what I had once imagined.

And that realization carries its own kind of heartbreak.

Because how do we grieve something that hasn't actually happened?

How do we mourn a future that existed only in our hopes, our plans, and our understanding of what our lives would become?

Yet that's precisely what we sometimes have to do.

Sometimes, before we can give birth to a new vision for our lives, we have to grieve the death of the one we thought we would have.

And that grief deserves its own space.

It doesn't need to be hurried along by well-meaning encouragement to embrace change, find the silver lining, or start planning our next chapter.

Sometimes we simply need to acknowledge that something we loved, valued, or believed in has come to an end.

And allow ourselves to mourn it.

But grief doesn't have to be the end of the story.

There may come a moment, sometimes months or even years later, when we begin to look at our circumstances through a different lens.

Instead of asking only why this happened, we begin asking what this change might be inviting us to examine.

And that's where something extraordinary can begin.

The Question That Comes Before the Plan

When we recognize that something needs to change, our natural instinct is often to move immediately into action.

We evaluate our options. Consider the practical implications. Assess the risks. Develop strategies. Set goals.

What happens next?

What are my options?

How do I make this work?

What's the plan?

These are important questions. Sometimes they're urgent ones.

But they are questions of implementation.

They help us navigate the practical realities of moving from one set of circumstances to another.

They don't necessarily help us understand whether the destination reflects who we authentically are.

And sometimes, when we're struggling to make a decision, it's precisely because we haven't yet done that deeper work.

I know that was true for me.

It wasn't until I began asking myself some fundamentally different questions that I could begin to imagine a future I genuinely wanted to live.

Who am I?

What do I value?

What matters to me at this stage of my life?

What brings me joy, purpose, and fulfillment?

What have I set aside while fulfilling the roles and responsibilities of my life?

And what am I no longer willing to sacrifice to maintain a version of success that no longer reflects those things?

These weren't questions about becoming someone new.

They were questions about rediscovering who I had always been, beneath the expectations, responsibilities, and identities I'd accumulated along the way.

And as I began reconnecting with that understanding, something shifted.

I stopped measuring my future against the one I had lost.

And began imagining one that reflected what I truly valued.

Identity precedes strategy.

Not because strategy doesn't matter.

But because before we can intentionally architect the next chapter of our lives, we need to understand the person we're building it for.

The Life I Could Never Have Imagined

Looking back now, I can see something that would have been impossible for me to recognize while I was living through those transitions.

If I hadn't made the difficult decision to leave my marriage more than 20 years ago, I would never have had the opportunity to build the life I've lived in Los Angeles for the past 23 years.

And what a life it has been.

Not without its challenges, disappointments, or difficult chapters. Far from it.

But a life filled with experiences, relationships, opportunities, and adventures that I could never have imagined when I was grieving the future I thought I was losing.

And I see something similar when I reflect on my professional journey.

Looking back, I wonder whether I would ever have found my way to coaching if the entertainment industry hadn't undergone such profound changes.

Perhaps I would still be trying to fit myself into a professional identity that, despite all the success and fulfillment it had once brought me, was no longer aligned with what I truly wanted from my life.

I might never have created ReinvenHER.

And I might never have discovered how deeply meaningful it would be to help other women explore the very questions I had needed to ask myself.

None of that makes the difficult chapters less difficult.

It doesn't erase the grief, the uncertainty, or the years it sometimes took to find my way forward.

But it has changed how I understand those experiences.

What once felt like the loss of the future I had imagined eventually became the opening to a life I could never have imagined.

And somewhere along the way, I came to another realization that fundamentally changed how I understood my life.

I Had Been Swimming Upstream

For years, I had been like a fish swimming upstream.

Working harder. Pushing forward. Trying to make circumstances fit the future I had imagined, even when those circumstances were telling me something different.

I had become so accustomed to the effort that I hadn't stopped to question whether I was swimming in the right direction.

And then, gradually, I began to let go.

Not of my ambitions. Not of my responsibilities. And certainly not of my willingness to work hard for the things that mattered to me.

But of the belief that I had to keep fighting against the current to build a meaningful life.

I stopped trying to force my future to resemble the one I had once imagined.

And I began allowing myself to explore where life might take me when I made decisions grounded in who I was and what I truly valued.

Something remarkable happened.

My life didn't necessarily become easier. But I began to experience a sense of ease.

The challenges were still there.

There were still difficult decisions, unexpected obstacles, and moments of uncertainty.

But I no longer felt as though I was constantly swimming against the current of my own life.

There was a growing sense of alignment between who I was, what I valued, and the direction I was choosing.

And that distinction changed everything.

Because ease isn't the absence of difficulty.

It's the experience of moving through life without constantly fighting against who we authentically are.

I hadn't stopped swimming. I'd simply stopped swimming against myself.

Rediscovery Is Where Reinvention Begins

I don't believe every painful experience happens for a reason.

Nor do I believe every unexpected change automatically leads us somewhere better.

But I do believe that sometimes the circumstances we never would have chosen can become the catalyst for examining a life we might otherwise never have questioned.

We may discover values we've neglected, passions we've set aside, or possibilities we hadn't allowed ourselves to imagine.

And we may begin to recognize that the future we thought we'd lost was not the only future in which we could find meaning, fulfillment, and joy.

Perhaps there's another path.

One that reflects our authentic selves more fully.

One that offers a different kind of purpose.

One that allows us to build a life that feels more aligned with what matters to us.

Not because we've become someone entirely new.

But because we've rediscovered who we've always been.

And perhaps that's what I find so remarkable about Ona's question in Women Talking.

“When we've liberated ourselves, we will have to ask ourselves who we are.”

She recognizes something profound.

Changing the circumstances of our lives and understanding who we are within them are two different things.

And sometimes, as I've learned through my own experiences, we need to begin asking that question before we can find the clarity to make the change at all.

We don't always get to choose when life asks us to begin again.

We don't always know what lies beyond the circumstances we're struggling to leave behind.

And we certainly don't always recognize, in the midst of grief and uncertainty, the possibilities that might eventually emerge.

But when we're ready, we can begin asking ourselves the questions that allow us to move forward with greater intention.

Who am I?

What do I value?

What kind of life would genuinely reflect the person I am?

Because reinvention isn't about abandoning our past or becoming someone entirely new.

It's about rediscovering who we've always been and giving ourselves permission to build a life that reflects that understanding.

Sometimes the most important question is the one we never think to ask.

And sometimes, asking it changes everything.

ReinvenHER | Rediscover who you are. Reimagine what’s possible.