There You Are: Returning Home When The Ground Shifts

Life has a funny way of getting in the way of itself. One minute you're living it on your terms. The next, you're living on its terms.

This happens to most of us more regularly than we'd like to admit. And if you're anything like me, someone who resists a changed plan unless I'm the one doing the changing, you feel every single instance of it. The smaller disruptions? Those tend to bring out my fighter. The advocate who problem-solves, pushes back, finds another way. But sometimes life doesn't just inconvenience you. Sometimes it delivers something that stops you cold. And that's a different thing entirely.

The past few months have been that kind of time. Shifts at every level: in the world around me, in my work, in the quiet rhythms of an ordinary winter. Together, they had a weight that was harder to name than any single one of them. A seismic shift I hadn't seen coming and hadn't planned for.

When the Earth Moves

When the stakes are higher, when it's the kind of change that shifts the ground beneath you, my response is different. Flight kicks in — this isn't happening, this can't be happening. The blood drains, my heartbeat races, and my breath feels almost lost. A heady buzz takes over as every part of me scurries trying to find solid ground.

The world narrows to a tunnel of worst cases and unknowns. My mind races with frantic what if planning, mentally preparing for every possible worst case as a way to feel like I'm doing something, even without having all the details yet. The part of me that needs to be prepared, trying to regain control the only way she knows how.

But at some point — not quickly, not cleanly, sometimes only after what feels like arctic-level freeze — something shifts. The weight on the chest begins to lift, the breath returns, the blood finds its way back. The head begins to clear. And finally the narrow, airless tunnel of worst cases softens into something wider. Something that can actually hold more than fear.

And I hear myself say — there you are.

Coming Home

Like coming home to yourself after a long absence. It's actually a concept I return to often in my work: that moment of locating yourself honestly, without flinching. You can't navigate forward until you know where you actually are. Not where you planned to be. Not where you wanted to be. But here. Present. Yours.

The things outside my control don't disappear. They just stop being the place where all my energy goes.

And with that comes a kind of clarity, not acceptance of what's happened, and certainly not resignation to it. More like the steadiness to see it clearly. What's mine to influence and what isn't. What I can actually do something about, and what I need to stop pouring my energy into. The things outside my control don't disappear. They just stop being the place where all my energy goes.

And from that place, something else surfaces. Not aggression, not forced positivity — more like a quiet internal voice that says you have the capacity to move through this. Just figure out the how.

For me, "figuring out the how" rarely arrives as a plan. It arrives as a question. Unlike the anxious spiral of what if that came earlier, it now it offers something quieter and more outward-facing. What's needed here? Where can I actually be useful? Sometimes that means showing up for someone else, creating space, lending a hand, stepping in as an advocate. Sometimes it means gathering enough clarity and courage to take the next small step forward. It looks different every time. But the question itself is always the beginning of the movement.

The capacity to move through hard things isn't something you build from scratch each time. It's already there, accumulated quietly through every other thing you've navigated. Every time you found your footing when the ground shifted. Every time you didn't know how but figured it out anyway.

You've never been through this. But you've been through this.

And that's enough to take the next breath. Regroup. And start moving forward.

But here's the thing — that capacity doesn't surface on its own. It asks something of you first. The willingness to loosen your grip on how you thought it was supposed to go. To stop fighting the fact that the plan is gone and start finding your rhythm within the new reality instead.

Not because what happened is okay.

Not because you have to be at peace with it.

But because that's where your energy actually becomes useful — to yourself and to others.

Want more? Subscribe to get blog posts in your inbox, or join me for deeper reflections

and practical wisdom in my bi-weekly newsletter, Practically Well.