Ep 143 Who Am I Now? Navigating Transition, Identity & the Space Between with Andrea Nakayama

What happens when a role, relationship, career, or version of yourself that once defined you no longer fits — but you don’t yet know what comes next? In this episode, Anna sits down with Functional Medicine Nutritionist, writer, educator, and entrepreneur Andrea Nakayama for a deeply personal conversation about transition, identity, endings, and the uncertain space between who we were and who we’re becoming. Andrea’s own life has included profound transitions. After losing her husband to brain cancer while raising their young son, she left a career in book publishing and entered the world of functional nutrition. She later founded the Functional Nutrition Alliance, growing it into a global health education company that trained thousands of practitioners before selling the business and, years later, ultimately leaving the company she had created. That experience brought Andrea face-to-face with a question many of us encounter in different forms throughout our lives: Who am I without the role that has defined me? Anna and Andrea explore why transitions can feel so destabilizing, why our culture offers so few rituals for endings, and why the in-between period isn’t necessarily something to rush through. Andrea shares the idea of “provisional states” — the seasons when we’re trying on possible versions of what comes next — and how learning to honor that experimentation can bring more compassion to ourselves and others. They also talk about motherhood, aging, menopause, discernment, narrative medicine, and what happens when we loosen our grip on the life we thought we were supposed to have and become curious about what might be emerging. In this episode: • Why identity can become so intertwined with our work and roles • The three choices Andrea saw when she realized something no longer fit: fight, swallow, or leave • Why endings deserve ritual and acknowledgment • What “provisional states” can teach us about uncertainty • The difference between looking for a new identity and learning to tolerate not knowing • Why transition can feel especially intense in midlife • How aging changes our relationship with striving, fixing, and acceptance • The role of writing and narrative medicine in making sense of our lives • Why pausing can help us hear our own voice amid everyone else’s messages • The difference between grasping for what was and opening to what might be • Andrea’s experience of letting go as her son moved across the world • Why discernment has become central to Andrea’s current work • How remembering what other women have survived can help us trust our own capacity to move through change Connect with Andrea Website: https://www.andreanakayama.com Substack: https://andreanakayama.substack.com Instagram: @andreanakayama Connect with Anna Website: https://www.annaholtzmantherapy.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaholtzman/