Sometimes life changes so much that the person we thought we were no longer feels quite like who we are.

A career changes. A marriage ends. Children grow. The world around us shifts. Something we have carried quietly for years begins asking for our attention.

And somewhere underneath all of it, there may be a quieter question waiting:

Who am I now?

This is where my conversation with Tova Citrin begins.

Tova is an author, songwriter, and AI technology executive whose life has unfolded across worlds that might seem, at first glance, very different from one another. Technology, spirituality, writing, music, motherhood, Jewish mysticism, and creativity all have a place in her story.

What struck me most was not the apparent contradiction between these different parts of her life, but the way they all belong to the same person.

The Parts of Ourselves We Leave Behind

Tova began writing poetry when she was eight years old. She describes herself as someone whose nature was always drawn toward spirituality, philosophy, writing, creating, and building.

And yet, her professional life eventually led her into high tech.

It was not necessarily the path she had planned for herself. It was a path shaped in part by family expectations and by discovering that she was very good at the work.

There is nothing wrong with that.

In fact, Tova speaks with gratitude about the experiences, relationships, and opportunities that came from her career.

But there was also a part of herself she had been holding back.

Her writing sat quietly on a shelf for years.

She had written her novel, 10 Seconds to Midnight, 12 to 15 years earlier. Then she married, had children, and moved into another chapter of life. The book remained there, waiting.

Sometimes our creative selves are not gone.

They are simply waiting for us to have the capacity to hear them again.

When Everything Falls Away

In recent years, Tova found herself in a profound life transition. She was unemployed, recently divorced, living in Israel during war, and caring for her two young children.

The familiar structures of her life had shifted all at once.

She described the experience as having one pillar holding up her internal world, only to have that pillar suddenly knocked down.

And then came the question:

Who am I now? What is my goal? What am I here to do?

For many of us, these questions arrive during transitions that may look very different on the outside.

A child leaves home.

A career no longer feels meaningful.

A relationship changes.

We become parents and discover that the person we were before is not quite the person we are becoming.

We move through grief.

We reach a point where the old ways of living simply cannot carry us forward.

These moments can be painful. They can also reveal something.

Tova found herself returning to the thing that had always brought her joy: creating.

She pulled her novel off the shelf and began editing, rewriting, and reshaping it. She returned to poetry. Then she discovered that she could transform her poems into songs, using AI to create the music and voice.

She created an AI music artist called Avia Sage.

She began writing a Broadway musical called Company Man, inspired by her years in the corporate world.

And through all of this, something began to change.

She was finding her way back to herself.

The Courage to Be Seen

One of the most moving parts of our conversation was Tova's reflection on judgment.

For much of her life, she wanted to be liked. She wanted to be accepted. She wanted to be successful. She wanted to be the "good girl."

Many of us know this pattern.

We learn, often very early, to understand ourselves through the expectations of other people. We become who we think we are supposed to be.

Then, sometimes, life gives us an opportunity to step outside that picture.

For Tova, that meant reaching a point where she could say, in essence, This is me.

Even if it seemed unusual.

Even if people thought her combination of technology executive, novelist, songwriter, and musical theater writer was a little strange.

She began to realize that she did not have to fit herself into one category.

And there is something deeply liberating about that.

We are all surprising dualities.

We can be practical and spiritual. Structured and intuitive. Mothers and creators. Caregivers and people who need care ourselves.

We do not have to choose one part of ourselves and discard the others.

Growing into ourselves takes time.

Giving Our Feelings Some Air

Tova also spoke beautifully about grief.

Living in Israel for more than 20 years, she has experienced war and profound uncertainty. In recent years, she also experienced divorce and the loss of an entire professional network that mattered deeply to her.

There was a tremendous amount of grief inside her.

And creativity became one way of giving that grief somewhere to go.

She described writing music as a way of taking something painful and transforming it into something beautiful. The grief does not disappear. The trauma is not erased.

But something happens when the feeling is given expression.

It gets some air.

I love this idea because it speaks to something we understand deeply through the work of conscious care.

What we hold inside needs somewhere to move.

In the sacred window after birth, we see this so clearly. A new mother is moving through an enormous physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual transition. She needs nourishment. She needs rest. She needs presence. She needs people who can sit beside her without requiring her to be anything other than exactly where she is.

Tova's story reminds us that this need does not belong only to new mothers.

It is human.

We all move through seasons where we need to be held, witnessed, nourished, and given room to become something new.

Resilience Is Something We Live

Tova said something that stayed with me:

Resilience is not simply something we talk about. It is something we live.

For her, resilience has meant continuing to wake up and meet what is in front of her without pretending that the difficult things are not happening.

She has also watched her children learn from this process.

Her daughter has begun writing songs. Her son has found his own ways of moving through difficult experiences through movement and sports.

The family did not escape the pain.

Instead, they found ways to move with it.

That distinction matters.

We sometimes imagine healing as reaching a place where nothing hurts anymore. But perhaps healing can also mean becoming more able to be with what is here.

To feel.

To create.

To speak.

To connect.

To let something move through us rather than become lodged inside us.

The Medicine of Community

There was another part of our conversation that felt especially important to me: community.

Tova shared that there was a time when she lived in Jerusalem and felt utterly alone. Today, she has a strong community of women around her who helped carry her through difficult seasons.

Friends brought her coffee. They got her out of the house. Someone brought challah for Shabbat.

She spoke about the communal tradition of bringing meals to families after a baby is born, or when someone is recovering from surgery, or when a person is simply going through a difficult time.

This is something I return to again and again in my own work.

Care does not have to be complicated.

Sometimes it is a meal.

Sometimes it is showing up.

Sometimes it is sitting beside someone.

Sometimes it is a friend who refuses to let you disappear into isolation.

We are not meant to move through every transition alone.

The circles of care we create for one another matter.

Finding Our Way Back

Near the end of our conversation, Tova shared that the heart of her novel is about facing the things we do not want to face, being brave enough to sit with pain, and finding our way through it.

She spoke about redemption.

She spoke about healing.

And she said something simple and powerful:

It is never too late.

Never too late to fix something.

Never too late to heal.

Never too late to become more fully ourselves.

Perhaps part of that healing is not continually trying to fix ourselves, but learning to accept who we are.

To soften the voice inside our own heads.

To become kinder toward the person who has lived through everything we have lived through.

To say to ourselves:

That was hard.

You're okay.

You're safe.

I'm here.

You are not alone.

There is something deeply aligned with the Universal Mother Principles in this kind of inner care. The way we learn to hold ourselves becomes part of how we learn to hold others.

And perhaps this is why Tova's story resonated so deeply with me.

Her journey is not about becoming someone entirely new.

It is about remembering the parts of herself that were always there.

The writer.

The artist.

The mother.

The spiritual seeker.

The technology executive.

The woman who feels deeply.

The woman who creates.

The woman who is still becoming.

We are allowed to be all of these things.

We are allowed to change.

We are allowed to begin again.

And sometimes, in the middle of all the noise of our lives, we need only a few quiet seconds to hear the voice that has been waiting patiently within us.

Maybe that is where the way back begins.

When she's not writing fiction, Tova works in artificial intelligence and trust & safety, helping make the digital world safer.

Ten Seconds to Midnight is her debut novel.

Links:

Website: www.tovacitrin.com

YouTube – Aviya Sage: Aviya Sage

Ten Seconds to Midnight: Available on Amazon here

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Podcast Music is Composed by Sara Emmitt, graduate of the Center for Sacred Window Studies. You can hear more of Sara’s incredible music at www.saraemmitt.com.