The moment everything shifted wasn’t when the lifequake hit. It was when normal never came back.

When we were temporarily living in Boston for my husband’s brain cancer surgery and treatment in 2022, I remember thinking, I cannot wait to go home to the Outer Banks. Just for things to get back to normal.

In my mind, the big thing had happened.  And even though treatment would continue indefinitely, the dramatic, most intense part felt like it was behind us. The upheaval was now complete. And I believed that once we were home, life would go back to something more normal.

Fall rolled around and we were finally able to come home. I was so ready to get back on track.

I had the plans ready to go. There were work and homeschool schedules, meal plans, workout routines. All of them were well researched and ready to go. I just needed things to settle down a little so I could begin again.

A month went by. Then two.

And I found myself bundled up in layers, sitting outside at night on the porch, gazing at the stars. I can’t even remember what drove me out in the cold except that I needed a minute to regroup. 

In that moment, I was so far away from things feeling normal. 

Being home felt more jarring than living in that small, cramped apartment in Boston. At least there, life was supposed to not feel normal. Here, nothing felt like it fit.

The workout plan? Never started – always pushed because I was exhausted.
The meal plan failed in week one. (Chemotherapy gives zero f*&ks for a meal plan.)

The reality was my schedule changed every hour. I found myself pushing work off to the side, delaying taking care of myself. I kept saying I’d get to it, that I just needed a moment to catch my breath first. 

So, I doubled down on my spiritual practices. They’d never failed me before. I meditated, grounded, drew cards. And still, nothing slowed down. The world kept spinning and I couldn’t find my footing. I felt like every time I planned something, the universe would laugh and flip it upside down. 

I was exhausted, burnt out and over it.

And I’d like to say that moment under the stars was where I hit rock bottom and suddenly realized there would never be a normal to return to. But I didn’t. 

I must’ve held on to the idea of getting back to normal for the better part of a year. 

But I did eventually get it:

Normal wasn’t coming back. And contrary to popular belief there was no “new” normal sliding in to take its place.

What we were moving through wasn’t normal at all. Nothing about it was ok or familiar. And expecting it to be was setting us up for failure.

That failure was the thing that finally shifted everything. 

Every system I had relied on collapsed. Every plan fell apart. Every practice and tool that had once worked stopped working. 

I was at a choice point. I could keep trying to make sense of my life through the myth of normal, gripping tighter and forcing things back into a shape I recognized. 

Or I could let go of all the advice I’d been given and the practices I learned. Ideas that meant well, but weren’t designed for uncertain times. And create something that would move with me and meet me where I was.

Radical release. Radical surrender. It was scary as hell. But I did it. 

I stopped waiting for things to settle and started meeting my life day by day. Staying curious. Creating new ways of thinking. Building new practices to support who I actually was in that moment.

But the thing I really needed to understand was that the problem wasn’t me. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

The problem was that I’d been taught uncertainty was something to fix. Something that ends once you heal enough, plan enough, recover enough, integrate enough.

But the “normal” I was told to wait for didn’t exist. The person I was before wasn’t the person I was after.

I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t wrap this up neatly and move on. My life had changed and I felt like a stranger inside it.

And this uncertainty wasn’t a short season. It was going to stretch across years, not months.

So I had to reimagine everything. Not just the day-to-day chores and schedules, but how I made decisions. How I shaped my spiritual practices. How I trusted myself – and the universe – again.


No more putting off big decisions while waiting for clarity that would never arrive.
No more shame about not healing fast enough.
No more pushing myself to make the impossible happen.

Waiting for normal had been the thing keeping me from living.

And I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this.

So many of us struggle because what we were taught about navigating uncertainty doesn’t work once we’re actually in it.

When bodies become unreliable, when roles or relationships dissolve, when time feels shortened or pressured, or when the world itself is loud and unstable, our old strategies collapse. Planning stops working. Mindset tools strain. Spiritual frameworks promise relief they can’t deliver.

Our issue isn’t just fear or stress. It’s that no one taught us how to live when uncertainty doesn’t end.

That’s the work I do. I help people make sense of where they are and decide what comes next when certainty isn’t available.

And it’s the focus of a new 1:1 intensive I’m offering – an extended, private session for people whose lives have already changed, but who haven’t yet found their footing in what comes next.

If you see yourself in this story and you’re ready to try something different, send me a message here to chat about if the intensive is a good fit for you.