When Your Life Changes — But You Haven’t Caught Up Yet

by Helena Chan
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Some change is chosen.
Some arrives without asking.

It may come as redundancy, a relationship ending, a move across countries, or the quiet realisation that the life you’ve built no longer fits — even if, on paper, it looks fine.

What often makes these moments difficult isn’t only uncertainty about what comes next. It’s the subtler loss underneath: the version of you that existed before things shifted. The identity, structure, or sense of belonging that once felt steady.

This kind of grief is rarely named. So it’s often carried privately — alongside competence, responsibility, and the expectation to adapt quickly. Life continues, but something inside feels unanchored. Not broken. Just in transition.

Change asks more than practical adjustment. It asks you to loosen your hold on who you were before you have clarity about who you’re becoming. That in-between space can feel disorienting and lonely, particularly for people who are capable and used to managing uncertainty.

And yet, this is often how real transition unfolds.

Not in clean steps.
Not with immediate answers.
But through a period of not-knowing, where meaning and direction gradually take shape.

This is the part of change where answers don’t arrive through effort, but through attention — sometimes supported by another who can hold the mirror while you listen for what no longer fits, and what is quietly asking to take its place.