We just moved into a new home in a new city.
At the moment, it looks like a shipping container vomited in our living room. There are boxes everywhere—some labeled helpfully (“kitchen”), others more cryptically (“important-ish stuff?”). My suitcase is doing double duty as a dresser. And the dogs have claimed a pile of bubble wrap as their new beds.
The move was absolutely the right call. But there’s still a voice that keeps asking:
What the hell did we just do?
It’s not the first time I’ve heard that voice.
I heard it the day after I left my tenured professor job—when the safety net vanished and I realized I’d just walked away from a paycheck for life.
I heard it after ending a relationship I knew wasn’t right—when the silence in the house was louder than any conflict we’d ever had.
I’m hearing it again now, after leaving a home we loved. But the city no longer brought us alive. So we left.
Now we’re somewhere new—full of possibility, but also totally unfamiliar. And that voice is here again.
That’s the part no one warns you about.
The hardest part of any transformation isn’t the beginning. There’s a rush in the initial decision to let go. You feel bold. You finally did the thing you’ve been too scared—or too polite—to do.
The danger comes after.
After the resignation email is sent. After the relationship ends. After the moving truck pulls away.
You’ve burned down what wasn’t working. But nothing new has taken its place. And suddenly, you’re in freefall.
Welcome to the in-between.
This is the liminal space. The caterpillar inside the chrysalis—not yet a butterfly, but no longer itself. Just a biological soup of dissolving cells caught in the chaos of becoming.
It’s not glamorous. It’s not linear. And it’s certainly not shareable on Instagram.
Most people panic here. Some peek at the mess and think, “Nope, too much, I’m going back to my old life.” Others rush to rebuild what they just tore down.
Leave a job? Recreate the same dynamics in a freelance gig.
End a relationship? Swipe right into the same pattern with a new face.
Move cities? Rebuild the exact same life in a different zip code.
Letting go is the easy part.
Staying is harder.
Staying when everything in you wants to backpedal.
Staying when your old life starts to look suspiciously attractive again.
Staying when you’d do just about anything to feel “normal.”
That’s where I am right now.
The house doesn’t feel like home yet. The routines are all wrong. The future is blurry. And the bubble wrap definitely has more emotional stability than I do.
But I know this much: This isn’t failure.
This is becoming.
So if you’re standing at the start of the new year, dreaming big, feeling brave—good. Make the leap.
But also, be ready for what comes next. That moment when it gets dark. When you feel like you’ve made a terrible mistake. When nothing feels like you.
If you can stay in that in-between—if you can resist the urge to rush back to safety—you’ll emerge transformed.
Not just with a fresh coat of paint.
But with wings.
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