Identity: More Than the Thing You're Known For
About this episode
Kate Kayaian discusses her journey of identity beyond her career as a professional cellist and the personal revelations that followed.
Have you ever performed feeling completely fine while everyone around you assumed you were falling apart. Kate Kayaian knows that feeling from the inside. She spent four decades as a professional cellist, the kind of career most people only dream about, and on the night that career quietly ended, a room full of people watched her voice shake and assumed grief. What she was actually feeling was relief. We talk about how she chose the cello at four and a half because of a boy she had a crush on, and how that one small decision became her entire identity for the next forty years. We talk about what it felt like to be cheered for and still feel like, in her words, a trained monkey. We talk about giving herself permission to stop with no crisis forcing her hand, just a quiet knowing. And we talk about sitting at her mother's deathbed and asking forgiveness for a decision her mother never needed her to ask forgiveness for. The shift here isn't really about quitting an instrument. It's about the moment you realize the thing everyone has always known you as isn't the whole truth of who you are, and what it costs, and frees, to go find out who's underneath. What You'll Hear Why a four…
More episodes of The Life Shift | Conversations About Life Before and After
- Illness: When the Hard Thing Sets You Free
- Self-Worth: The Life She Fought For
- The Cost of Quiet: Learning to Speak Up After Years of Silence
- Bonus: Introducing Trivia, Sort Of
- Writing Your Own Story: When the Fire Reveals What Matters
- Identity: The Job That Wasn't the Whole Story
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Life Shift | Conversations About Life Before and After podcast page.