Once upon a time in my little corner of the internet, I used to participate in #TransformationTuesday. It usually involved a before-and-after photo, meant to show how my body had changed and talk about the journey from then to now.
These days, I don’t care too much about the physical changes. Bodies change. Mine has changed a lot over the years, and that’s part of my story, but I don’t feel the need to always make it a feature of the story. Now, if I dye my hair purple or something (foreshadowing), that’s a physical transformation that you best believe I’ll be sharing.
It’s not Tuesday, and it’s not 2016. There’s no comparison photo. But I’ve definitely got some transformation I want to talk about.
In my last post, I shared that my latest ADHD hyperfixation is astrology. Well, I am still deep in that rabbit hole… and it doesn’t look like I’ll be coming out of it anytime soon. The more I learn about my chart and the current astrological transits, the more I think, “This is way too accurate to just be a coincidence.” I know I have only barely scratched the surface of understanding astrology, and that’s what keeps pulling me in deeper and deeper.
The most prominent theme in my life lately (honestly, for the last two or three years) has been figuring out who I am, what I actually want, and what parts of my life still fit the person I’m becoming. I feel it most in a few areas of my life: work and running.
Where astrology comes in: when I look back at the major transits that have happened over the last two years and apply them to my own natal chart, things that didn’t make sense or that seemingly “came out of nowhere” start to become much clearer. I’m sure some of that is a little bit of “hindsight is 20/20,” but I’m fascinated by the possibility that the energy of the cosmos really is reflecting—or even influencing—the things happening in my life in ways I’m only now beginning to understand.
One of the transformations I’ve experienced lately has been my relationship with structure, especially in my career. Before my ADHD diagnosis, I knew I needed structure but didn’t understand exactly what kind. I knew that training plans helped me stay consistent with running, and it seemed that the structure of my job helped me stick to routines and kept me accountable there.
Then I left for a job that had a lot more flexibility. At first, I thought that was great. About a year later, I started working with a therapist who specialized in ADHD, and a lot of our work focused on structure and routines. I started to question whether the flexibility of my job was actually not good for my ADHD brain. Maybe I would feel better and manage my symptoms better if I had a job with more structure.
Ironically—or maybe not, but more on that later—around the same time I started thinking this, the opportunity to return to my previous job, the one I once thought I would spend my entire career in, became a real possibility. So I went back.
And it sure did have structure. But it didn’t necessarily feel like it was helping my ADHD as much as I thought it would.
Soon after I went back to my previous job, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD and started medication. For a while, I thought maybe this was the missing piece: medication plus structure at work. Surely that would make everything feel right. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, ADHD medication has definitely helped. And I definitely do need structure. But I need structure that fits my life, not structure that I have to fit my life around.
This is where my astrology rabbit hole gets really interesting. When I look back at this timeline, I can see all of these things happening in my life and think, Well, I guess I was just making a series of random decisions based on what seemed right at the time.
Then I look at my chart. Pluto entered Aquarius in late 2024, moving into the sign opposite my Leo Sun—the part of my chart most closely connected to identity and sense of self. And wouldn’t you know it, that happened right as a major career change was unfolding for me. Pluto’s long transit through Aquarius is associated with deep transformation, and for me, it has been moving through a period of questioning who I am, what I want, and what roles I still want to hold onto.
So maybe all of those decisions weren’t quite as random as I thought. Maybe Pluto was over there like, Oh, you thought you were done transforming? Absolutely not. Looking back at the last two years, that tracks.
Another area of transformation in my life that relates to my sense of self is my relationship with running. If you’ve been following along here or on my other social media, you’ve seen a decrease in my running. You’ve read about me questioning if I still want to be a runner and what space running holds in my life. A few years ago, I was really focused on getting back to the runner I used to be before COVID, before my body changed, before my whole life changed when my mom died.
Now? I really don’t care about that. That’s not to say that running no longer matters to me, or that I hate running. Running has brought me some of the most important people in my life and has allowed me experiences I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
There’s a part of me that feels like if I no longer identify so strongly as a runner, if it’s a less important part of my life, I will lose some of that—the people, the experiences, the community. I’m still working on what this transformation looks like and what it means for me, but I’m starting to feel better about it.
I can run because I enjoy it. I can take a break. I can try a different kind of exercise. I can change my mind. I can let running be a part of my story without requiring it to be the whole story.
I’m getting better at choosing what I actually want instead of what I think I should want. I’m getting better at challenging my people-pleasing tendencies and letting go of the sunk cost fallacy. I’m getting better at recognizing when something mattered to me, gave me exactly what I needed, and simply doesn’t fit the life I’m building anymore.
That doesn’t mean it was a mistake. It mattered to me. I got everything I was supposed to get from it. And the show will go on. The transformation that is happening in my life (and in my astrological chart) isn’t about becoming a completely different person. It’s about becoming less attached to the versions of myself that I thought I had to be. I don’t need to try to fit my life around who I used to be. I’m trying to build a life that fits who I am now. I don’t have to be “Marathon Megan” to enjoy running. I don’t have to be a bariatric dietitian just because I have invested so much time and energy into it and once said I would never leave it.
This isn’t #TransformationTuesday—not because it isn’t Tuesday, but because there is no before-and-after photo. I don’t need to define myself the way that I used to, and I don’t need to prove that my identity has changed. I’m still me. The core of who I am is still there: a good friend, someone who makes people feel safe, someone who cares deeply about the world and the people around her.
I think the real transformation is in how I define myself. It’s no longer by what I do, but by who I am no matter what I do.
RD on the Run 