Change—we wait for it, dread it, pray for it, run from it—but somehow, it always finds us.
I’m writing this while sitting on the floor of my room, surrounded by boxes and a mattress with no frame, in a house with three roommates I met just a few hours ago. About a month ago, I decided to uproot my life for no reason other than that I was craving change.
Most of the time, change finds us. A new job that forces a move. Starting school in a different state. Illness. A breakup. But sometimes, we’re given the rare privilege of choosing it for ourselves—and that can still be uncomfortable.
How do we make decisions when we’re not sure where to step next? How do we trust that we’re choosing correctly? The truth is, I don’t know if we ever fully know. But I do believe that learning to lean into discomfort is a lesson we never outgrow.
When change is a wrecking ball
One of life’s inevitable turning points is the kind of change that knocks you off your feet and humbles you.
In the past year, I’ve lived through more of those moments than I thought I could handle. I watched one of the most important people in my life turn around and walk out the door while I sat there sobbing—no exaggeration.
My mom received a misdiagnosis of a brain aneurysm, and while we waited for answers, I couldn’t stop thinking that my life would shatter if anything happened to her.
I lost a job that once felt like everything I had worked toward. I spent months unemployed, editing and re-editing my resume for hours every day while companies turned me down again and again.
My anxiety got so bad I could barely leave the house, yet somehow I still got on a plane for a two-week trip to Europe with ten of my oldest friends. Instead of being present, I spent most of it in a constant, drawn-out panic attack—watching the experiences pass me by, wishing nothing more than to enjoy them.
Eventually, I moved back home to a different state—broke, heartbroken, defeated, lost, humiliated, and completely unsure of what came next.
But hear me out.
Now, on the other side of a year that nearly broke me, I can say with certainty that my pain became something else. It eventually hardened into a foundation I now stand on, stronger, steadier, and more confident than I’ve ever been.
Working with the raw materials
At my lowest point, it felt like every pillar of my life had been melted down into liquid metal: reduced to something shapeless, waiting to be forged into something new.
There’s something almost mesmerizing about watching things burn—like staring into flames or glass glowing red-hot before it’s reshaped. There’s a strange allure in the chaos of a life on fire. Maybe because, deep down, you know it will burn out. And what follows is a quiet, ashy stillness where you’re left to sift through what used to define you.
But even if there’s hope in that, when a new beginning forces its way in, it can feel violating. I was angry with the kind of grief I could never fit on this page. If you’ve ever been in this stage of change, you know the silence left behind by your old life doesn’t feel peaceful. It sounds like a scream.
So I started from scratch. I asked myself: if nothing was tethering me anymore—not a relationship, not a job, not a city—where would I go?
I thought about all the moments I had ignored before: sitting at my desk at work, wishing I could be anywhere else; lying next to my ex, feeling a silent panic telling me to leave; even the friendships that never quite felt right.
In hindsight, we always know when something isn’t working. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less when it finally falls apart.
But when I finally saw the freedom in front of me—the kind I had cried and wished for my entire life—something in me shifted. I was initially overwhelmed by my old life slipping away. But I realized it was everything my younger self had always wanted, how I imagined I’d get to experience the world. And as much as I would have done anything to save my relationship, having that decision made for me was ultimately an opportunity.
So, I’ll say it plainly: let it go.
The man who demeans you. The job that drains you. The city that never felt like home—release it.
I’m generalizing, but I do think many of us—especially women—are conditioned to stay. We fix and endure long past the point of knowing something isn’t right. We hold on.
I can’t ignore how much that conditioning shaped my own choices. But I realized that what I was holding onto was less about what I truly wanted and more about trying to prove to myself that I was worthy of something.
Learning to trust yourself
After the emotional whiplash of everything, I didn’t know how to trust my own intuition. So I started with something simple: work.
I knew I was ready to level up my career, so I focused on rebuilding. I grew my freelance clientele, onboarded myself into a new full-time role, and got my finances to a place where I could finally think about what I wanted next.
Then, though I knew I wanted to move, I didn’t know where. Instead of overthinking it, I followed my gut.
I chose San Francisco—a city I had always been drawn to but knew almost nothing about. It was a completely fresh start.
I signed a four-month sublease, permitted myself to change my mind, and went for it. The decision didn’t come overnight. Actually, it took weeks (and a lot of long phone calls with my mom). But underneath all the noise, I could feel it: I was ready.
Now, as I’m finishing this, I’ve been here just over a week—and I love it. More than that, I love myself for getting here.
I’m sharing my story because there were moments when I felt so hopeless. I was so lost that even getting through the next two hours felt impossible. For a long time, the bad days outnumbered the good. Sometimes, it was entire months.
And that’s okay.
After so much change that felt completely out of my control, choosing something for myself—something big—became one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done.
When I reflect on everything that happened over the last year, I wouldn’t be sitting here if it hadn’t stripped me down the way it did. I’ll admit this might sound overly optimistic, but I genuinely believe that my pain ended up being the best thing that happened to me.
I know it sounds cliché—and it can feel impossible to believe when you’re going through one of the hardest periods of your life—but time really does heal. You will learn, grow, and change from everything that’s happened, even if the hurt never fully goes away.
Building a healthy relationship with change
Throughout our lives, we move through different eras—stability, busyness, grief, celebration, even long stretches of mundanity. And part of what makes it all so meaningful is that we never really know what’s coming next.
So whether you’re in the middle of something painful or standing on the edge of a chapter you’ve been dreaming about, expect it to feel uncomfortable.
Staying stuck is hard. Growing is hard. Either way, moving through change is a part of life.
I saw a quote the other day:
What a privilege it is to outgrow the things you once prayed for.
And it is.
If I can end with one piece of advice that I fall back on over and over again, it’s that things usually find their place. There were so many days I felt like I was going through the motions. And that’s okay. Sometimes life does shrink down to the basics: getting out of bed, having something to eat, watching a comfort show.
When life moves around, it takes a while to find your new routine. If you can take the pressure off—enjoy the transition—even if it kind of sucks. There will be a day when you look back and smile: for the new life you’ve built, for making it through a really hard time. And honestly, for having enough emotional distance to look back with a new perspective and understand why things had to change.
So be brave. Be gentle with yourself. Be curious. You’ve handled all of your worst days so far, so trust that you’ll probably make it through this one too.
