Coping With Change You Didn't Choose

A commitment to show up and write my truth | Day 262 of 365

It was 9:03 in the morning and I was in the car, already late, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel at a light that had no intention of changing.

Then the news came, and before the words were all the way out, I already knew.

I said it out loud to nobody. Here we go.

I'm not going into details. It's not my story to tell, but it does very much affect me and my life. What I can tell you is how it felt to sit at that light, late to somewhere that suddenly did not matter at all, while the next several months rearranged themselves without asking me.

Life Doesn't Fall Apart. It Just Keeps Going.

Nothing stops. There's no montage. Life keeps going, almost insultingly normal, while everything underneath it shifts. Dinner still has to happen. You answer texts and pick up almond milk and say "good, how are you" to the woman ahead of you at the pharmacy, and the whole time there's a second conversation running in your head that nobody else can hear.

That's the part that got to me. Not one big moment, but the tally — the quiet running total that starts the second something changes and will not switch off. What happens now. What does this mean for the next few months. How much of it depends on things I can't do a thing about from a car at a red light.

Why Coping With Change You Didn't Choose Is Its Own Kind of Hard

When you choose a change, you get to be terrified and excited at the same time. You made a decision. Somewhere there's a notebook with a list in it. The fear has a shape you can point to.

When it arrives on somebody else's timeline, you skip all of that. No decision to feel proud of, no list, just a new set of facts you never applied for and a lot of rearranging to do before you've finished hearing the sentence. And nobody hands you a week off to have your feelings in an orderly fashion.

We make this harder on ourselves by deciding we have to feel the correct thing about it. Silver lining in sight, we tell ourselves we should only be hopeful. Other people have it worse, we decide we haven't earned the right to be shaken. Hearts are not that organized.

You can trust that it'll work out and still be furious that it has to. That doesn't make you ungrateful. It makes you a person with a pulse.

I saw this coming, by the way. Not the day, but the shape of it. I'd talked about it out loud in a calm voice like a reasonable adult with a plan — and then it actually arrived and all that preparation walked straight out the door. My mind said we knew this was possible. My body said yes, but not today. It has decided 3 a.m. is a fantastic time to review our options, and it will not be taking suggestions.

Being shaken doesn't mean you lack faith. Steady on Monday and rattled on Wednesday isn't falling apart. It's moving through something in the order it wants to be moved through.

The Part I'm Still Chewing On

I was raised to believe the math works out. You tell the truth, you do the work, you treat people decently, and over a long enough stretch that adds up to something.

Then you watch someone be dishonest and simply carry on. No reckoning. They keep their footing while you're the one recalculating.

I know they'll have their karma. That's not really what shook me. What shook me is that it knocked a leg out from under the thing I'd been standing on. I've written before about what it does to you when someone turns out not to be who you thought they were, and this is the same bruise in a different spot.

So here's the honest version instead of the wise one. Some people are not straight with you and nothing happens to them right away, and you still have to get up and make breakfast. I haven't made that beautiful yet. I'm not sure I'm supposed to.

Then We Raised a Glass

At some point in all of it, we toasted. To an ending, and to a beginning. Both at once, out loud, on purpose.

It was sweet. It was bittersweet. It was the kind of moment where you're holding a glass up and your voice doesn't quite work right. Later I cried. Not the pretty kind.

We've been sold a version of resilience where you either fall apart or you rise above. That's not how it went here. We were sad and hopeful in the same breath, and I had tears running down my face the entire time.

You're allowed to grieve what's ending while toasting what's starting. You don't have to pick a feeling and commit to it for the evening.

Coping With Change Starts With Not Rushing Yourself

If you're in the middle of coping with change you didn't choose, let it be as unsteady as it actually is. Not the tidy version. Not the one that sounds spiritually evolved when you say it to people who ask how you're holding up.

Be unsettled about the plan you had. Be angry at the timing. Be tired in a way sleep doesn't fix for a while. Be fine on Friday until something small knocks it loose again.

You don't have to rush toward gratitude or find the lesson by bedtime. There will be time for meaning. Right now there can just be feeling.

And then, when you're ready, the smallest next thing. One call, one list, one honest conversation, one walk around the block because your body needs to move something. That's allowed to be the whole contribution for today.

I've been handed changes I didn't choose before, and I couldn't have told you at the time how any of them would turn out. Eventually I was standing somewhere new, usually somewhere I'd never have picked on purpose, wondering when the ground got solid again. That doesn't happen on the day you decide to be brave about it. It happens slowly, while you're busy doing ordinary things.

So maybe that's the whole assignment right now. Not certainty. Not a good attitude about it.

Just this: the drive, the glass raised, the crying, the breakfast tomorrow. And trusting that the ground comes back.

About the Author | Day 262 of 365

I'm a soul-led coach, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist, currently navigating healing, uncertainty, temporary chapters, motherhood, work, big transitions, grief, nervous system healing, overstimulation, emotional growth, and the ongoing lesson that life works a whole lot better when we stop trying to carry everything alone. Today that lesson looked like saying "here we go" to nobody, letting the tally run without trying to solve it, and raising a glass to an ending and a beginning in the same breath.

Day 262 of 365. Still standing. Still figuring it out. Still trusting what comes next. 🐧