The Season of Becoming: How to Design a Life You Actually Love

You don't build a meaningful life by waiting for permission. You build it by deciding what matters, then moving toward it—even when you're terrified, even when people judge you, even when you have no idea what you're doing.

Cierra, the brand manager at Minky Couture, knows this intimately. She's been through the kind of losses that break most people: the death of her infant son, two divorces, a decade as a stay-at-home mom, and the sudden realization that she had to rebuild everything from scratch.

The Freight Train Moment: When You Stop Denying Reality

Some moments stop you cold. For Cierra, it was when a physician told her that her newborn son's septic infection was "like a freight train going 200 miles an hour. We can't stop it." Grief doesn't follow the stages you read about in textbooks. Eleven years later, Cierra still has moments that are hard. She still misses him.

What's striking is how she didn't let that loss become her entire story. She learned that grief and joy don't cancel each other out. You can miss someone deeply and still be grateful for the people in your life.

The Divorce Double: When Clarity Comes From Loss

Being divorced in Utah—especially twice—carries a weight that people outside that culture don't fully understand. There's judgment. But Cierra learned that the judgment says more about the people judging than it does about her. And here's the real insight: when you're forced to rebuild, you get to choose what you actually want to build.

The Theater Kid Who Learned to Improvise Her Way Into a Career

When her first marriage ended in 2022, Cierra suddenly had to re-enter a workforce she'd left a decade ago. She sat across from Sandy Hendry, the founder of Minky Couture, at a dinner—five days after her husband left—and improvised a pitch for a job she wasn't even sure existed. Sandy said yes.

She joined 14 chambers of commerce. She read books. She listened to podcasts obsessively. She leaned on the one skill she actually had—the ability to create genuine relationships with people—and built a career on that foundation.

The Mantra That Keeps You Moving Forward

In Moana, there's a scene where Moana is on the boat, completely alone, trying to sail toward an island she can barely see. She repeats a mantra: "I am Moana. I will drive this boat. I will do this." Cierra does the same thing. Every day, she tells herself: "I can do this."

Some days it's genuine confidence. Other days it's pure act. But the mantra works because it's not about denying reality. It's about choosing action in the face of reality.

Designing a Life Worth Living

On her vanity, Cierra has a quote: "She designed a life she loved." She looks at it every morning. And it's not aspirational for her anymore—it's descriptive. She's actually doing it.

The only way through grief, through loss, through fear, is to move toward it with intention. Not to deny it. But to accept it, learn from it, and decide who you want to be on the other side of it.

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