For many years, I have been trying to understand the same question. What makes us lose the freedom to be who we are?

I am not talking about political or economic freedom. I am talking about something much more intimate. The freedom to keep changing. The freedom not to become trapped by the version of ourselves that we once built to adapt, belong or survive.

That question did not begin when I studied psychology. Nor when I worked in communication. It began much earlier.

For many years, I also lived through a character I once needed to build in order to move forward. A competent, strong and dependable character. A character that helped me survive my own story and navigate highly demanding environments.

I owe him a great deal.

But over time I also discovered the price I was paying. The more convincing that character became on the outside, the greater the distance I felt from who I really was. Eventually, the character that had once protected me began to limit my life.

That crisis changed my life.

But it also changed the way I understand people, leadership and organizations.

For more than fifteen years, I worked in strategic communication for international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations. I wrote speeches for presidents and senior executives, prepared leaders for international media interviews, designed communication strategies and worked with teams across Latin America and the United States. What I enjoyed most about that work was never the writing itself. It was sitting with extraordinarily intelligent people and helping them discover the story they truly wanted to tell. And, perhaps even more importantly, the place within themselves from which they wanted to tell it.

Over time, I realized that communication problems were rarely just communication problems. Behind a confusing message there was often a confused relationship with identity. Behind rigid leadership there was almost always fear. And behind organizations that had lost their way, there were often people who had become disconnected from what gave their work meaning—or cultures that no longer reflected who they had become.

That realization led me first to coaching and later to psychology. Not because I wanted to leave communication behind. But because I wanted to better understand the people and organizations behind every story.

Today my work sits at the intersection of psychology, narrative, leadership and communication. I work with individuals, leaders and organizations navigating moments of change—people who sense that the way they live, lead or communicate no longer reflects who they are.

I do not help people discover who they are.

I help them stop living exclusively from the person they once needed to become.

I do not believe identity is a destination. I believe it is a lifelong conversation. And perhaps freedom is not about finding ourselves once and for all. Perhaps it is about keeping that conversation alive, allowing ourselves to keep becoming, again and again, who we are still capable of becoming.

That question continues to guide my work.

And, most likely, my life.