Trusting yourself through change starts long before you know how any of it turns out. It starts the moment you decide to stay present with what’s true right now, even when nothing looks the way you planned.
When Life Doesn’t Unfold the Way You Imagined
For months, I’ve been sharing a personal awareness with family, friends, and clients.
When I look back over my life, I can see that my dreams, plans, and experiences never unfolded exactly the way I imagined they would.
Not once.
Some turned into what I now call #WhatIfItsBetter or #WhatIfItsGreat experiences. They unfolded differently than I expected, but in ways that were even better than I could have imagined.
Others did not feel good while I was living through them. They were painful, disappointing, confusing, or simply not what I wanted. Yet with the perspective of time, I can see how even those experiences were FOR me in ways I could not possibly have seen while I was in the middle of them.
I do not live with regret.
Every experience I’ve had has contributed to the woman I am today. And I like who I am.
If I could magically go back and choose differently, I would not change a thing. I would choose every experience again because each one played a part in my growth and expansion.
That does not mean everything that happened felt good or that there was no grief, anger, fear, or disappointment along the way. It means I have gained enough wisdom through fully living my life to know that I cannot always see where something is leading while I am living through it.
And perhaps that is where trust begins.
Right now, I hear so many women talking about changes they did not expect or cannot control. Health challenges. Surgery. Illness. Changing Relationships. Moving. Caring for aging parents. Family roles shifting. Environmental changes. Plans for this season of life looking very different than we imagined.
In Part one of this series, I wrote about becoming aware of what is happening inside us so we can move from automatic reaction toward a more intentional response. Awareness, alignment, and action give us space to choose how we want to show up.
But what happens when we become aware and the situation itself still does not change?
When life is changing beyond your control, can you trust yourself?
Can I Handle the Seasons of My Life?
As I was thinking about this article, Stevie Nicks’ song Landslide came to mind.
She wrote the song during a period of significant uncertainty in her own life. Her first album with Lindsey Buckingham had not succeeded as they had hoped; money was tight, and she was questioning whether to continue pursuing music. While in Aspen, Colorado, she found herself deciding whether to continue on that path or change direction. Nicks later described Landslide as being connected to that decision to keep going.
One line captures something I think many of us ask ourselves during major transitions:
“Can I handle the seasons of my life?”
She could not know what was coming.
She could not have known that she and Buckingham would later be invited to join Fleetwood Mac. She only knew where she was in that moment.
That feels important to me because trust is easy to talk about once we know the ending.
It is much more challenging when we are standing in the middle of the story.
Trust Is Not Certainty
I think sometimes we confuse trust with certainty.
We want to know:
What is going to happen?
How will this turn out?
Am I making the right decision?
What comes next?
There is nothing wrong with wanting answers. Wanting to understand what is happening and what comes next is human. And when those answers are not available, uncertainty can feel uncomfortable. Psychologists have studied what is called intolerance of uncertainty—our difficulty tolerating situations when the outcome is unknown. Research has linked greater intolerance of uncertainty with difficulties in regulating emotions.
But most of life does not come with guarantees.
The truth is, the only moment we are actually living is this one.
Perhaps instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty, we can begin strengthening our capacity to live within it.
Exercising Your Uncertainty Muscle
I think of it as exercising our uncertainty muscle.
Not forcing ourselves to feel comfortable when we do not.
Not pretending we are unafraid.
Simply becoming a little more willing to say:
I’m feeling uncertain. I don’t have all the answers, and right now I can choose to be okay with that.
What might change if, instead of demanding certainty from life, we became a little more comfortable with uncertainty?
Feeling Is Human. Holding Tighter Is Different.
Fear is human.
Grief is human.
Anger is human.
Resentment is human.
Feeling any of these does not mean we are failing to trust.
Change often brings emotion because something matters to us. Something familiar may be disappearing. Something we expected may no longer be possible. A relationship, role, home, body, dream, or version of life may be changing.
Meaningful change often carries grief, even when we choose the change ourselves. Thriving does not mean skipping over that grief. It means making space for it, honoring what mattered, and still allowing ourselves to move forward.
The opportunity is to notice what we do next.
Do we allow ourselves to feel what we feel, or do we begin holding so tightly that we use our energy fighting what is already true?
We resist.
We try to control the outcome.
We replay what should have happened.
And “should” is a word I pay attention to. Whenever I hear myself saying it, I know it is time to pause and breathe. I get to choose whether I continue “shoulding” on myself — or anyone else. Because underneath that “should” is often the belief that something needs to be different from what it is before we can be okay.
I know that place. I have visited it many times.
And increasingly I recognize that holding tighter rarely gives me the certainty I am looking for.
It simply makes the experience heavier.
Trust Begins With What Is True Right Now
During my recent move, I had one of those moments.
I had underestimated how much time a project would take and overestimated the space, energy, and bandwidth I had available. I kept operating from the amount of time and energy I wished I had instead of what was actually true.
Eventually, I had to stop and acknowledge reality.
I had to trust my own inner guidance enough to work with the time, energy, space, and bandwidth I actually had. I made a couple of key decisions that allowed me to willingly let go and be open to what was possible.
That experience gave me a simple way of grounding myself that applies to much more than moving:
The Practice of Trusting Yourself Through Change
This is where I am.
This is what is true for me right now.
I can choose my next step based on what I have the capacity for today.
There is something powerful about telling ourselves the truth.
We do not have to like what is true.
We do not have to approve of it.
We do not have to figure out what it means for next month or next year.
We are simply beginning where we actually are.
And from that place, we can ask:
What becomes possible when I stop arguing with what is true right now?
Trust Creates Space for Flow
Four words have been guiding me through this season of my life:
Trust. Flow. Yield. Let go.
They are not a formula. They feel more like a circle I return to again and again.
When I trust, I loosen my grip.
When I loosen my grip, there is more room for flow.
Flow does not mean passivity.
It does not mean pretending everything is fine.
It does not mean giving up our voice, our boundaries, or our responsibility.
For me, flow means becoming responsive to what is actually happening rather than exhausting myself trying to force life to follow the plan I originally created.
Sometimes flow means changing the plan.
Sometimes it means asking for help.
Sometimes it means resting.
Sometimes it means speaking up.
Sometimes it means pausing long enough to hear our own inner guidance.
And sometimes it means taking a step before we can see exactly where the path is leading.
That is an important distinction.
We often think we need complete clarity before we take action. But sometimes the act of movement is what helps create clarity.
We can trust ourselves enough to take one small step even when the ultimate decision is not yet clear.
Ask the question.
Have the conversation.
Gather more information.
Explore an option.
Ask for support.
Try something and notice how it feels.
That is what I call a One Degree Change.
We do not need to have every step of the journey mapped out.
We only need enough awareness and trust to take the next one.
A Few Questions to Help You Return to Trust
Trusting ourselves through change is not about finding the perfect answer or following someone else’s prescribed set of steps.
Your answer may be very different from mine.
Sometimes we simply need enough space to hear ourselves again.
When you find yourself gripping for certainty or trying to see farther down the road than you can right now, these questions may help bring you back to the present:
What is actually true right now?
What am I trying to control that may not be mine to control?
What do I have the capacity for right now?
What is one small step I can take even without having the rest of the journey mapped out?
What response feels true for me in this moment, physically, emotionally, and mentally?
These questions are not a checklist.
You may only need one of them.
The purpose is not to find the “right” answer. It is to create enough quiet to recognize your own.
Grief and Trust Can Exist Together
As The Grief Navigator, I have come to understand grief as something much broader than death.
We grieve what changes.
We may grieve the body we once had.
A relationship as it used to be.
A home.
A role.
A future we expected.
The freedom we once had.
Even our sense of certainty.
Trust does not ask us to skip over any of that.
We can miss what was and still move toward what is next.
We can feel afraid and still take a step.
We can be uncertain and still trust ourselves.
We can grieve what is changing and trust ourselves within the change.
Trust for This Moment
So I return to the question I asked at the beginning:
When life is changing beyond your control, can you trust yourself—for today, for this moment?
Not forever.
Not for every decision you may eventually have to make.
Not because you know how the story ends.
Just here.
Now.
Perhaps that is enough.
We cannot always choose what changes. We cannot guarantee the outcome. And we cannot always see where an experience is leading while we are living through it.
But we can notice what is true.
We can listen to ourselves.
We can allow what we feel.
We can loosen our grip on what we cannot control.
And we can take one aligned step.
Maybe Landslide continues to resonate after all these years because the seasons of life keep changing for every one of us.
And the question keeps returning in different forms:
Can I handle this season?
Can I trust myself here?
For today, for this moment, can I take the next step?
I do not need certainty about what happens next. I only need enough trust for this moment and the next step.
And perhaps that is how we begin to flow.
In Part three of this series, we will explore what becomes possible as we move more fully through Trust, Flow, Yield, and Let Go.
For additional resources, check out the Author Bio below:
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About the Author:
“My superpower is intuitive, heart-centered listening—creating space for women to feel seen, heard, and supported as they navigate change.” ~Kathy Mela
If you’re facing a major life transition—grief, divorce, empty nest, retirement, or a health shift, Kathy Mela offers a compassionate, empowering path forward.
A former Neonatal Nurse Practitioner turned best-selling author and transformational life coach, Kathy helps women over 50 move through loss and change into a more vibrant, meaningful next chapter.Drawing on decades of experience in both healthcare and leadership, she meets women exactly where they are, helping them go from just getting by to truly thriving.
With practical tools like her Live Full Out Guide, Navigating Life Transitions Playshop, Absolute Yes List, and ONE DEGREE CHANGE framework, Kathy gently guides her clients to rediscover their voice, reclaim their joy, and live the legacy they want to embody each day—intentionally and on their own terms.
