The Women We Become

By Andrea Yañez Knaack

Five reinventions. One life. A story for anyone who has had that gut feeling when you knew that change was inevitable.

There is a moment most women know. It arrives quietly, or sometimes all at once — a morning when the life you have been living no longer fits. Not because it is terrible. Not because you have failed. Simply because something in you needs to be taken seriously and tended to.

I have lived in that moment five (life-changing) time to date. Each time, I had to ask myself if I had the willingness to picture myself differently, and the courage it was going to take to become that new version of myself.

I am Andrea Yañez Knaack — Chilean, American, educator, language coach, textile artist, immigrant, wife, and a woman who lost 60 pounds and is still figuring out what comes next. I am also, most days, someone who is astonished by how many times one life can begin again.

Reimagination is not a crisis. It is evidence that you are attuned to the natural progression of your life.

The first time, I was at my alma matter the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and understood I did not want to work as a translator anymore — I wanted to be the person in the room where language was being born. A tarot card confirmed what I already knew. I became a teacher.

The second time, I walked past a poster that read, Vive y trabaja en los Estados Unidos. Live and work in the United States. I know those words carry a different weight today. I share this story anyway, because I am proud of my journey. I followed every legal pathway available, arrived on a J-1 Visa to teach Spanish in New Jersey, transitioned to an H-1B, and eventually received my Green Card — which is, for the record, not green. It is red, white, and blue with shiny plastic. This summer marks 25 years in the United States for me, and my 16^th year as a proud Naturalized US citizen. I love my adopted country.

As proud as I am of this reinvention, the homesickness is real. The longing — what we call añoranza in Spanish, a word that aches more than its translation — is the price of crossing an ocean by choice. When people ask where I am from, the long answer is Chile. The short answer is Philadelphia. The honest answer is both, always and simultaneously.

The third reimagination was the most deliberate. At 40, I decided — rationally, consciously — that I wanted a partner. I created a vision of the woman I wanted to be in a healthy and loving relationship and went about becoming her. This year is our tenth wedding anniversary. Love, I have learned, is not something that happens to you; it is something you intentionally commit to and practice every day.

Then came what I call the Perfect Storm. My husband changed jobs. I withdrew from the Philadelphia School District. The pandemic arrived. Pre-diabetic blood sugar levels, high blood pressure, perimenopause, and menopause — all at once. “That’s all”, I exhaled in my Miranda Priestly voice. I never returned to a public-school classroom. That shift in my universe invited me to finally face the question of who I was to become (or return to) without a self-assigned conventional role.

That reimagination came in two parts. First, my body. Over two and a half years of small, sustainable, imperfect daily choices, I lost 60 pounds — not through punishing discipline, but through compassion. I found the willingness to make one better choice at a time and gave myself permission to fall off the wagon without shame and begin again. The goal was never a number. I was imagining myself as a woman who felt well on the inside.

Change does not require monumental gestures. It requires small, honest choices, repeated with kindness toward yourself, until one day you look up and realize you have become someone new.

Second, my art. I have taken up textile work — memory quilts, mixed-media panels, bilingual text stitched onto reclaimed fabric — and a creative practice centered on the legacy of Gabriela Mistral, Chile’s Nobel Prize-winning poet and teacher. I am applying for artist grants and writing essays, among other exciting endeavors. I am, at this precise moment, inside a reimagination I cannot yet fully name, because I am still in the eye of it.

Note: sometimes you are reimagining yourself before you have the words for what you are becoming. It begins with an urge, a spark, followed by some restlessness. After a while, you reach a limit. Then comes the terrifying and exhilarating decision to imagine yourself in a different capacity.

My madrina — my godmother — always said, “Andreíta, when something is yours, all the pieces fall into place naturally. Trust your intuition. Believe in yourself.” I have tested that wisdom time and time again. I love my madrina.

I share this not because my story is extraordinary. I share it because I believe in modeling best practices — and one of my favorite ones is to show up exactly as you are. That act alone invites other women to dare to do the same. Every story shared creates connection. Connection reduces the collective anxiety of feeling alone in your reimagining. Maybe, somewhere in this space, there is a woman standing at her own limit, wondering if she has what it takes to begin again.

She does. You do. I know because I have been her, more than once. And here I am.

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Andrea Yañez Knaack, a Chilean-US bilingual educator, language coach, and artist who helps adults and communities grow through language, creativity, and
cross-cultural connection. She do this because twenty-five years of teaching
have shown her that when people find their voice — in any language —
everything becomes possible.

Educator · Language Coach · Artist · Philadelphia, PA

Chilean · Naturalized US Citizen · @andrea_cyk