8000 kilometers from home, where everyone knew my name and would turn to me for questions about endometriosis, I found myself in unfamiliar territory.
Suddenly, I was no one.
I am from Hungary, where we just managed to change a 16-year totalitarian dictatorship. Growing up in a system where you are always cautious with your words, where language is used carefully, and honesty can be risky, I found myself in a culture where the opposite felt true. In New York, I chose radical honesty as a way to build connection. Initially, embracing this openness felt disorienting, similar to uncovering a hidden part of myself, but it was also profoundly freeing. I stopped censoring my thoughts for safety or acceptance and started expressing them openly, using metaphors and authentic moments I had previously hesitated to share. The reactions were swift and intense because people didn't just read, they genuinely felt. It became evident that your niche isn’t something you can simply define intellectually; instead, it emerges when you release over-control of your voice and pay attention to what truly resonates.
I needed to figure out who I could become if everything that once defined me—my name, my environment, my credibility, the invisible structures supporting me—disappeared. I had to rebuild my identity from the ground up in a place where no one knew me, no one was expecting me, and no one would interpret my past as relevant.
I spent my first year not trying to succeed in the usual way, but on discovering who I am here, what I want to create, and how I want to do it despite the uncertainty. I lived more simply for a time and released my old self before knowing what would replace it.
Transitioning from a world where I didn’t have to justify myself to one where I had to create meaning anew was challenging. In this fresh environment, no one owed me attention, and assumptions about my abilities based on my past couldn't be made, since that history was hidden. Instead of trying to replicate my old life that didn’t fit, I shifted my focus to a different question—one that would influence everything afterward: How do I make a name for myself? How do I build something recognizable? But mostly: Who I want to be here?
So I started writing, at first without a strategy. I didn’t really know what my business would be, but still. It was the only way I knew how to stay in motion without lying to myself. Substack became less of a platform and more of a lifeline, a place where I could think in public, feel in public, experiment in public. Every uncomfortable truth I faced became something I openly shared because I instinctively understood that before having a business, your task isn't to conceal your uncertainty. Instead, it's to transform it into a clear signal, solving your problems publicly so others can see themselves in the process.
I began to realize what many call a "niche." However, that label never quite described what I was feeling. It wasn't simply selecting a particular category; it was more like play, pushing boundaries, accepting inconsistency, being early, and unfinished. I would write ideas that didn’t fully resonate, then write anew, again and again. Throughout this phase, I accepted something most resist: living more simply, with less certainty and minimal external validation. Yet at the same time, I experienced greater alignment and clarity about what truly belongs to me and what doesn't.
That first year, I treated my work as a kind of laboratory, testing topics, exploring depth, and pushing the boundaries of vulnerability. I wondered how close I could allow others in and how personal it could become without sacrificing its impact. This ongoing question—how personal I could make this while still providing value?—led me to what I now understand as somatic writing. It wasn't a deliberate choice but a necessity I discovered, especially when life forced me into a position where strategy was no longer viable, leaving only experience to depend on.
And then, six months after the moving, just when I was stretched thin and questioning my ability to keep building without stability, life hit me unexpectedly. I lost my dog, and grief didn't make me productive or give me clarity; it didn’t fit any narrative about resilience. It completely paralyzed me, to the point that even my simplest structures failed. The only way I could move forward was by almost forcefully returning to writing simply because I needed a place for the pain. What emerged was unstructured, somatic. People responded to the truth, how I wasn’t trying to resolve the pain but hold it long enough to give it form. In doing so, I could transform my pain into something that connected, something that made others feel less alone. It moved beyond me, extending outward. It mattered deeply; it allowed that connection to continue through the work. In my experience, when you are rebuilding, it’s better to use both online and offline possibilities to connect with the right people.
I made an effort to re-enter physical spaces whenever possible, by speaking at conferences and participating in rooms where ideas often transform through spoken words. This included events at Columbia University and the Endometriosis Foundation of America's Medical Conference. I engaged in conversations that began small and grew into larger discussions, reinforcing my online presence with real-world interactions. While attention can open doors, it is trust that truly enables you to walk through them.
Many people thought that I changed continents to start fresh but actually, when you already have something, you can’t start from zero. It’s what I thought at first, but later I understood that you have to dig even deeper than zero, because first you have to let go of your mindset, your routines, everything that gave you stability and safety. If you do it right, and you want to serve the people of the new place, you can’t just translate your original knowledge and experience. It won’t work. You have to dismantle everything you had before, and once you did that, you can start from zero. I arrived to rebuild on my own terms and make a name for myself in a city where I was unknown. Instead of copying what I had before, I aimed to create a personal brand that is resilient, able to withstand pressure, uncertainty, and change. Once you learn to build this way, you're creating more than a business; you're creating leverage, direction, and something that can move. For the first time, I’m not asking if it will work, I’m deciding how far I want to take it. This was never just about starting over; it was about proving to myself that I can build from less than nothing and make it meaningful. Now that I’ve proved it, I know I’m only getting started.
If I had to give one core piece of advice for anyone starting from scratch, it would be this: understand that building a new life requires letting go of the old one. True growth begins when you burn your bridges and embrace the heat instead of fleeing from it. Instead of seeking safety on the surface, allow yourself to explore beneath, sometimes much deeper than you believe possible, until you find a foundation that truly belongs to you—stable enough to lay the first brick. Though it may take longer, appear smaller, or feel uncertain, it will be solid and reliable.
You know it’s important to have a written plan, a strategy, but what actually will lead you and anchor you is your vision. Stick to it. Keep your vision close, even in the darkest hours, when doubt and the fear of failure suffocate you. It is a love letter to yourself, from yourself, a letter written in decisions, in persistence, in stubborn hope, but mostly in the unshakable belief that you will find your way out of every hole, whether it was dug by others or by your own hands, and that every rejection, every closed door, every moment that feels like a setback is not stopping you but moving you, with uncomfortable precision, closer to what is actually yours.
Rebuild Recipe:
Start by accepting that you are starting from zero or less than that, because your past will not automatically translate, and the sooner you stop expecting it to, the sooner you can begin building something that actually works where you are.
Build your personal brand before you build your business, because if no one knows you, without recognition, your infrastructure is attention and visibility. This means for example I posted every day at least 5 times on Substack for 4 months, making new connections, leaving at least 5 thoughtful comments per day under others' posts and liking at least 25 notes daily before I even thought about turning on the paid subscriptions.
Solve your problems in public; business is always about solving problems. Once you figure out how to ease it, you can offer your solutions. Sometimes it’s enough to be just a few steps ahead of your audience.
View finding your niche as a form of play rather than a fixed choice, and enjoy the game. It involves testing, adjusting, letting go, and accepting that during this phase, your life might appear more limited externally, but internally, it is becoming more focused and clear.
Allow meaning to arise from pain, as the often hardest things to articulate tend to be the ones that forge the strongest connections, if you remain patient and persistent in expressing them.
Narrow aggressively, as clarity consistently outperforms versatility during rebuilding, and trying to be everything will make you invisible.
Make your name, online and offline, because visibility might open doors, but trust is built in rooms, conversations, real presence, and radical honesty. People sense performative vulnerability; nothing kills connection faster than that.
And underneath all of this, one decision that changes everything:
Accept that your new life will cost you your old one.
Then, burn the ships, and enjoy the flames.
Nóra Árvai is an applied health psychologist with six university diplomas and over 16 years of clinical experience. She has logged more than 28,000 hours in consultations with chronically ill patients and medical professionals, wholeheartedly embracing the role of a “bridge” to connect the two sides.
As a science communicator, her mission is to make science approachable and relatable, helping people make informed and confident decisions about their health. Over the years, she’s written 15 books, she published 2,155 articles, and made over 190 television and radio appearances.
Her passion for creating a more compassionate and effective healthcare system has led her to pursue a PhD in medical futures at the Kálmán Laki Doctoral School of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences at the University of Debrecen, Hungary.
