Unbecoming everything that isn't really you is about putting down the roles and habits you picked up for a time that has passed. Your treatment, your safety and the people who are good for you are never among the things you put down. The line is shared widely under a famous name, and I found no source for it.
Saule tips her handbag out on her bed, looking for a pen, and everything she carries every day lands in one heap.
Her phone and keys. A lip balm. The blue inhaler she has carried since she was nineteen. A hair tie that belongs to her niece. Two receipts from the pharmacy near her building. And a plastic access card on a faded cord, for an office tower she left three years ago.
She turns the card over. The photo on it shows her with shorter hair and a careful smile, the version who caught the first train in, answered emails on the platform and never once left before her manager. Saule never decided to keep the card. It simply moved from bag to bag.
She puts it in the kitchen drawer with the spare batteries. Everything else goes back in the bag, the inhaler first.
What does unbecoming everything that isn't really you mean?
It means putting down what you took on for a season, like a manner that suited a job you've since left, once that season has passed. It isn't a clear-out of your life. The hyphen says it best: un-becoming undoes a becoming, the way Saule moved one old card into a drawer and put everything else back.
Un-becoming never asks you to stop treatment or medication, to step back from the people who stand by you, or to drop a habit that still protects you from danger. Every one of those is yours to keep, and whether anything in your care should change is a decision you make with your doctor. A diagnosis you've been given, for your body or your mind, is real too. It isn't one of the shapes the line is talking about, and questions about it belong with your doctor, not with something you read online. And if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
Why does the hyphen in un-becoming matter?
It marks a reversal. Untie, unpack and unpick each run a verb backwards, and the knot, the case and the seam all survive it. Each verb undoes something done earlier.
So un-becoming starts by admitting that a becoming happened. Saule's card is a small record of one: for years she was the one with the careful smile who answered emails on the platform, and that suited the job she had. Over the years you may have become the colleague who replies within a minute, the guest who always helps clear the plates, the person who always offers to drive. Shapes like these usually fit one period of life. What is unlearning looks at a smaller cousin of these: a habit that fits one place.
For the becoming half of the word, there's an RS Method quiz. Two things come with it: anything painful it touches is worth bringing to your doctor, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. With that said, the quiz is Who Did You Become to Survive?, on a site of its own. Or read on.
Each shape stays in place because it was made to manage a feeling: the worry of falling behind, of being left out, of being a bother. While that worry still rises in the moments the shape was made for, the shape still has work to do, and it stays. Unbecome, my book, says in chapter 5: "Armor goes on for a reason and it comes off the same way: when it is finally safe."
Undoing also assumes there was something there before the doing. The hyphen carries that too. Drop it, and unbecoming turns into an everyday adjective for something unflattering or improper, as in an unbecoming remark. That isn't the sense here.
Who wrote the line about un-becoming?
I can't tell you, and I'd rather say so than pass on a guess.
The line turns up on social media, in blog posts and across quote sites, often with a famous author's name under it. None of the copies I found gives a book, a page or a date. Quote Investigator, a site that traces well-known lines back to where they were first printed, had no entry for it when it was checked on 21 October 2026. The copies don't even agree on the wording: some carry an extra clause at the end, and others stop short of it.
So I won't put a name on it, and I won't quote it. It isn't from my book either, though my book's title is the same verb without the hyphen.
Does everything in that line mean everything?
Not in the way it sounds. This is the word I'd slow down for.
Read fast, everything sounds like a clear-out, and a clear-out is the opposite of what Saule did. One card went in a drawer, and the inhaler went back in the bag before anything else. Some of what you've added to your life is holding it up right now: any treatment you're on, any medication you take, the people who stand by you, the routines that keep you safe. Those were never the shapes the line means, however much the word everything seems to sweep them in.
Becoming has real value. Learning a trade, an instrument or a new way of working is becoming, and worth every hour you give it. The line sets becoming and un-becoming against each other. I wouldn't. Un-becoming is for the shapes you took on to get by, after the time they were for has gone.
In Unbecome, unbecoming never comes on its own. Remembering goes with it; the book says the two "trade places all your life". For the remembering side, read how to remember who you are.
Before anything comes off, what holds you up?
This exercise isn't therapy or medical care. If you're in treatment, keep working with your doctor or therapist. The exercise is built for everyday manners and nothing heavier. If the habit you're thinking of involves alcohol, drugs, a relationship that harms you or hurting yourself, it doesn't belong here. Get help from your GP, a mental health professional or a helpline, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
It's the same look Saule gave her bag, done on paper. Have a pen to hand and a quiet spell to yourself.
- List your care and your safety. Your treatment and medication, your appointments, the routines that protect you, and the people you're safe with. Nothing on this list changes because of this exercise.
- Name one small habit you've wondered about. A manner, not a judgement of yourself: checking your phone the second it buzzes, saying yes before you've heard the whole request, rehearsing a call before you make it. Write down the habit itself, and nothing about what sort of person it makes you.
- Check it against the first list. If it touches anything there, it stays where it is. If it's one of the things this exercise was never for, stop here and take it to a helpline, a doctor or somebody you rely on.
- Read the first list once more, slowly. It's the inhaler going back into the bag first.
Any step is a fine place to stop. Whatever comes of it can go to your doctor, a friend who treats you well, or a counsellor.
How does my book handle the same idea?
Unbecome works with the same idea at book length, and in a few places it reads differently from the line.
- Respect for what stays. Chapter 5 promises: "Nobody here is going to rip anything away from you."
- A warning about removal itself. In chapter 9's words: "Subtraction can be hoarded too."
- A named author. My name is on the cover, and I answer for every page in it.
For me, travelling light has never meant travelling empty.
Safae, on Amazon, about Unbecome: "This is a different way of seeing life, of seeing ourselves and of living."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. There's no need to delete that line if you saved it. Unbecome takes the same idea further, under a name you can check. Get The Paperback