Change
Stories from the Path | JBE Mindful pathways
Nobody tells you how damn relentless change really is. It doesn’t wait for your permission. It doesn’t care about your timing. It doesn’t knock politely before it wrecks your plans — it barges in, flips the table, and dares you to pretend you’re fine.
We talk about change like it’s optional, like we get to choose it. But you don’t. Your body changes while you’re busy ignoring it. Your kids outgrow the version of you they once needed. Jobs vanish. People walk away. The mirror gives you a face you don’t recognize. That’s not drama — that’s Tuesday.
And still, we fight it. We cling to what’s already gone — routines that don’t fit, people who’ve already left, versions of ourselves that expired years ago. We bargain, we beg, we numb out. And the whole time, change just keeps coming, like a freight train that doesn’t give a shit about your comfort.
Here’s the truth no self-help book wants to tell you: change hurts. It costs you pieces of yourself you thought you couldn’t live without. It leaves you raw, unsteady, messy as hell. But — and here’s the part worth bleeding for — change also clears the ground. It rips up the old roots so something real can grow. Not polished, not perfect. Real.
This isn’t a pep talk. It’s a warning and an invitation: change is coming, whether you’re ready or not. The only choice you have is whether you’ll keep fighting what’s already gone… or let the damn breaking open you’ve been avoiding make space for something new.
Take that in for a second. Sit with it. Because everything after this is proof of that truth.
Endings: The Death Before the Rebirth
The Physics of Change
Change isn’t a vibe; it’s a law. You don’t “believe” in change any more than you believe in gravity. The universe runs on motion and decay and renewal. Your life is just one tiny choreography inside that bigger dance.
Start microscopic. Your body is a demolition site and a construction zone at the same time, 24/7. Skin cells flake off while new ones push up. The lining of your gut turns over in days. Red blood cells retire after a few months and fresh ones clock in. Bone isn’t a statue; it’s living tissue that gets broken down and rebuilt constantly, which is why a body that lifts or walks more literally remodels stronger scaffolding. Even memory is maintenance: synapses strengthen or prune depending on what you use and what you ignore. Nothing about you is “set.” You are a moving target pretending to be a still photo.
Zoom out. Your brain runs on rhythms: ultradian pulses of focus and fatigue, circadian cycles tied to light and dark, monthly hormonal tides, seasonal drift. Sleep doesn’t just rest you; it clears metabolic junk from your brain, files the day’s learning, and resets emotional charge. Miss that cycle enough and your mood, hunger, pain, and patience all get weird. That isn’t weakness. That’s physics. Systems need periodic downshifts or they burn out.
Go bigger. The planet itself is a wheel—seasons, migration, growth, dormancy. Nature survives by honoring cycles, not by muscling through them. Trees don’t apologize for dropping leaves. Bears don’t ask for permission to hibernate. Only humans call it failure when we need to slow the hell down.
If that sounds poetic, cool—but it’s also biology 101. Your body doesn’t guard a mythical “perfect balance” (homeostasis) so much as it adjusts on the fly to meet demand (allostasis). That means you are not supposed to feel the same every day. Some days are output days. Some days are repair days. When you try to live like a machine with no seasons—same pace, same grind, no ebb, no flow—your physiology pays. Blood pressure creeps. Sleep fractures. Hunger cues go haywire. Your nervous system runs hot, then cold, then gives up and calls it “numb.”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: every “new you” requires a funeral. Physics again. To build anything, the old form has to give. When you learn a new skill, your brain literally rewires—new pathways strengthened, old ones trimmed. When you strengthen a muscle, you create micro-tears so the tissue can rebuild thicker. When you heal from a loss, your mind renegotiates meaning, and the old map of “how life was” gets dismantled. There is no growth without breakdown. No harvest without compost. You’re allowed to hate that. You’re not allowed to avoid it.
Pause here. Notice your own body while you’re listening. Where are you resisting change right now?
We love pretending otherwise. We try to freeze what’s comfortable and call it stability. But “no change” is just a slow leak with nicer lighting. Entropy doesn’t negotiate—leave anything alone long enough and it degrades. Health is not the absence of movement; it’s the practice of guiding it. That’s why maintenance—boring, repeated, unsexy maintenance—is the holy work. Sleep on purpose. Eat like you respect your organs. Breathe deeper than your inbox. Touch sunlight. Lift something heavier than your guilt. Repeat. That’s physics harnessed, not feared.
Let’s deal with identity—because it’s physical too. You are not a floating “self” above the body. Identity is embodied: patterns of firing neurons, hormone signatures, muscle memories, postures, micro-expressions, gut-microbiome chatter. Change the inputs and the “you” that emerges changes with them. New routine, new people, new questions? Different chemistry. Different wiring. Different choices. This is why “I don’t recognize myself” can feel like a crisis…and also why it’s a sign the system is updating.
And yes, endings hurt. Don’t gaslight your biology. When a chapter closes—job lost, kid leaves home, relationship shifts, body enters a new season—your stress circuitry lights up like a siren. Cortisol climbs to mobilize you. Heart rate elevates. Digestion takes a back seat. Sleep gets choppy. That is not your lack of grit; that is a survival response doing exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive through uncertainty. What fries us isn’t the spike—it’s the refusal to adapt after the spike. We keep living like the fire is still raging, even when the smoke has cleared.
So what does honoring “the physics of change” look like in real life?
- Ride the rhythms, don’t fight them. Work in waves. Ninety minutes on, ten off. Bright light in the morning; dimmer at night. Heavier cognitive or physical loads in your personal “daylight,” gentler tasks in your evening. You’re not a robot, stop scheduling like one.
- Build for recovery on purpose. If stress is the stimulus, recovery is the adaptation. Sleep is a training tool, not a luxury. Food is raw materials, not morality. Real rest is an input that makes you better at life.
- Expect the wobble. New chapter? Plan for a messy middle. Give yourself margin—extra time, simpler meals, lighter social load. If you brace against every wobble, you turn adaptation into injury.
- Let old structures fall. If a habit, role, or relationship was built for a version of you that no longer exists, physics says it will crack anyway. You can cling to the rubble or you can start the remodel.
- Measure by direction, not perfection. In dynamic systems, progress isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. Stop judging your life by a snapshot. Watch the trend.
Maybe the most radical thing you can do is stop pretending permanence is the goal. The goal is stewardship. Of a changing body. A changing mind. A changing life. If you respect how matter moves—how it breaks and renews—you stop taking change so personally. It isn’t a punishment. It’s the operating system.
So yes, endings feel like death because on some level they are. A structure dissolves so another can take its place. Mourn it. Don’t rush it. But don’t confuse the ache of dismantling with the verdict on your future. Physics has already voted: nothing stays. And buried inside that verdict is the mercy you keep forgetting—you are allowed to become someone new.
Identity Earthquakes
Change doesn’t just happen “out there.” It happens inside you, in the identities you thought were nailed down. And when those plates shift, it feels like an earthquake.
You know this one. The job you built your confidence on disappears, and suddenly you’re not the “provider” anymore. A relationship ends, and you’re no longer the “other half.” A child grows up, and motherhood takes on a new, lonelier shape. Menopause shows up uninvited and rewrites what “feminine” even means. Illness drops out of the sky and strips away the body you once trusted. Grief cracks the ground under your feet until you don’t even recognize the face staring back at you in the mirror.
These aren’t small adjustments; they’re demolitions. They gut the stories you’ve told about yourself for years. And because identity is wired into the body, your nervous system reacts like you’ve lost a limb. Cortisol spikes, your chest feels heavy, sleep slips, your appetite spins out. It’s not just in your head. It’s in your hormones, your muscles, your breath.
That’s why people cling. Not because we’re weak, but because the death of an identity feels like the death of us. We cling to titles, to routines, to clothes that don’t fit, to relationships that expired years ago, because letting go means facing the truth: the “me” we once were doesn’t exist anymore.
Here’s the kicker: that death is not failure. It’s the system doing what it must. When a role ends, when a body changes, when love leaves — the quake is violent, but it clears the ground.
I know that hit deep. That’s the cost of becoming. Breathe into it.
Something has to collapse so you can rebuild. The body knows this. The psyche knows this. The problem is, we keep pretending we can dodge it.
Identity earthquakes aren’t comfortable, and they’re not supposed to be. They’re supposed to shake you hard enough that the old foundation can’t stand. The invitation isn’t to patch the cracks — it’s to build new ground.
How the Body Reacts
Here’s what people don’t tell you: your body doesn’t give a damn whether the “loss” is a death, a breakup, a job, or your hormones staging a coup. To your nervous system, loss is loss. Change is danger.
That’s why grief doesn’t just sit in your head — it floods your bloodstream. Cortisol shoots up, your heart pounds, your gut twists, your breath gets shallow. You can’t think straight because your brain reroutes power away from logic and into survival. It’s fight, flight, or freeze, even if the “enemy” is just your kid leaving for college or your skin sagging in the mirror.
Hormones are ruthless messengers in this process. Estrogen dips and suddenly your moods swing like a wrecking ball. Testosterone falls and your energy tanks. Cortisol refuses to clock out, leaving your immune system shot and your muscles clenched. These aren’t “just feelings.” They’re biology rewriting itself in real time.
And the grief response? It’s not only about losing someone. You grieve identities. You grieve jobs. You grieve the body that used to run upstairs without aching. The body doesn’t distinguish — it mourns what’s gone, period.
This is why change feels so brutal. You’re not only processing an ending with your mind — your cells are processing it too. The tears, the insomnia, the weight gain or loss, the random aches… that’s your body screaming, “Something died in here.”
But — and this is crucial — the body isn’t betraying you. It’s protecting you. It’s buying you time, slowing you down, forcing you to feel so you don’t bulldoze through loss without metabolizing it. The body says, Stop. This matters. Pay attention.
The quake in your chest, the shaking hands, the exhaustion — those are not weakness. They’re the physiology of rebirth
The In-Between: The Messy Middle
Nobody warns you about the hallway. Everyone romanticizes beginnings and endings — the new job, the breakup, the baby, the funeral. Those get headlines. But the middle? The in-between? That’s where people quietly lose their minds.
The in-between is where the scaffolding gets ripped down, but nothing new is built yet. You don’t have the old life anymore, but you don’t have the new one either. You’re standing on ashes, clutching a blueprint you can’t read. It feels like being stripped naked in public while everyone else looks so damn composed.
This is where doubt lives. Where you question if you made the right call, or if the change forced on you will ever stop burning. Where you keep trying to shove your foot back into the old shoe, even though it’s already three sizes too small.
And it’s not pretty. It’s insomnia, snapping at people you love, eating too much or too little, staring at your phone like it might hand you a map. It’s friends saying, “You’ll get through this,” while you secretly wonder if they’re lying to make you shut up.
The messy middle doesn’t give you clarity; it gives you chaos. And in the chaos, you start to see parts of yourself you’d buried — your impatience, your rage, your hunger, your loneliness. They come clawing up through the cracks, demanding to be felt. The old self is already gone, and the new one hasn’t arrived. You’re living in the bruise.
And if you’ve ever been here, you know exactly what I mean.
Here’s the cruel joke about the in-between: it looks like nothing is happening, but everything is happening. Your nervous system is recalibrating. Your brain is pruning old pathways, literally rewiring itself. Your gut is twisting, your hormones are surging, your cells are replacing themselves. On the surface, you feel stuck. Underneath, you are molten.
That’s why it’s so damn exhausting. The messy middle eats your energy because your body and mind are running in the background like overloaded software. You’re not weak for feeling tired — you’re transforming. But transformation never looks graceful from the inside.
Most people try to skip this stage. They chase distractions, force premature answers, or slap a spiritual quote over the chaos and call it “closure.” But you can’t shortcut the bruise. If you dodge the in-between, you carry the infection of the old life into the new one.
The paradox? The in-between is the very place that breaks you open enough to grow. It strips the armor you swore you couldn’t live without, and in the rawness, something unpolished but true begins to pulse. Not the old self, not the fully-formed new self, but the bridge.
And the bridge is where courage is built. Not in the victories, not in the conclusions — in the waiting, in the not-knowing, in the willingness to let the wreckage breathe before you demand it become something else.
Beginnings (What Emerges)
Change doesn’t always announce itself with fireworks. Most beginnings show up in a whisper: a decision you make at 11:37 p.m. that nobody witnesses. You close the laptop. You don’t answer the text. You tell the truth in therapy. You lie on the floor and let yourself breathe like you’re a living thing instead of a machine. That’s a beginning.
Big revelations are sexy. Quiet discipline heals. The nervous system doesn’t learn safety from speeches; it learns safety from repetition. The body trusts what it experiences often. That’s why the smallest consistent acts beat the loud one-off breakthroughs every time.
Every beginning is a body relearning safety.
Tools for the path (that actually move the needle)
1) Therapy (pick the tool for the job)
Not all therapy is the same, and that matters when you’re rebuilding a life.
- Trauma-informed talk therapy helps you name the story and stop gaslighting yourself. You’re not “crazy”; you adapted.
- Somatic therapies (SE, sensorimotor, EMDR) pull healing down from the head into the body, where the panic actually lives. You learn to notice cues, discharge survival energy (shaking, tears, heat), and come back to baseline without shaming the response.
- Skills frameworks (CBT/DBT/ACT) give you levers: thought checks, distress tolerance, values-based actions. Think of them as grip points when the climb gets vertical.
How it lands in the body: good therapy increases vagal tone (your “calm-down” wiring), which shows up as steadier breath, fewer adrenaline spikes, and less “I might die” for no reason at 2:14 a.m.
2) Journaling (not cute, effective)
This isn’t about pretty pages. It’s about getting the noise out of your head so your nervous system can stop bracing. Try this simple loop, daily if you can:
- Name it: “Right now I feel… (three words).”
- Locate it: “Where in my body?” (jaw, gut, chest)
- Source it: “What just happened?” (one sentence, no essays)
- Next gentle step: “What would help by 5%?” (water, text a friend, step outside)
Prompts for the harder days:
- “What expectation is crushing me that nobody said out loud?”
- “If I stop earning love by over-delivering, what breaks? What begins?”
- “Where does my body say ‘no’ that my mouth won’t?”
Even one of those prompts, if you sit with it, can shift everything. You don’t need them all at once.
Body angle: writing lowers cognitive load. Less rumination = fewer cortisol dumps. Over a few weeks you’ll notice easier sleep onset and fewer tension headaches.
3) Rituals (closing and opening)
We underestimate ceremony because it sounds woo. Meanwhile our bodies are begging for markers—“this ended, this begins.”
- Closing ritual: write what you’re done carrying on scrap paper. Read it out loud. Rip it. Trash it. (Fire if safe.) Drink water after.
- Opening ritual: pick one anchor for mornings (light at the window + 60 seconds of long exhales) and one for nights (phone out of the room + “body scan” from crown to toes). Non-negotiables. No perfection, just consistency.
Body angle: predictable cues teach the amygdala the day has a shape. HRV ticks up, sleep deepens, you start waking without dread.
4) Community (the opposite of collapse isn’t “self-reliance,” it’s connection)
We’re not designed to heal in isolation. Choose one layer and make it real:
- Peer group (online or local) where the rule is truth over optics.
- Skill community (yoga, ceramics, choir, run club) where you belong for doing, not fixing.
- Care web with two people you can text “bad brain day” without explaining.
Script if asking for help makes you sweat:
“I’m practicing saying it before I minimize it: today is heavy. I don’t need fixing—just a 10-minute call or a dumb meme.”
Body angle: co-regulation isn’t poetry; it’s physiology. Safe faces and voices down-regulate threat responses. You borrow another nervous system’s calm until yours remembers how.
5) Boundaries (medicine that tastes like ego death)
Boundaries aren’t walls; they’re dosage instructions. They tell the world how to interact with you without poisoning the relationship—or you.
- Time boundary: “I’m available 10–4. After that I’m offline.”
- Labor boundary: “I can do X. I can’t do Y. Choose which one matters more.”
- Emotional boundary: “I won’t discuss that by text. If it’s important, let’s schedule.”
Expect pushback. People benefitting from your over-functioning will call your health “selfish.” Hold the line anyway.
That might sting. That’s okay. Boundaries always feel heavy before they feel holy.
Body angle: every kept boundary is a rep for your vagus nerve. Over weeks you’ll notice fewer stress spikes from pings and obligations, and your baseline energy stops leaking everywhere.
6) Faith & meaning (even if you don’t do “religion”)
You need a frame wider than your current mess. Call it God, call it nature, call it future-you watching with kindness. Practice one act that plugs you into meaning daily:
- step outside and let actual light hit your eyes,
- read eight lines from a sacred or secular text that steadies you,
- place a hand on your heart and say, “I’m allowed to be new.”
Body angle: meaning reduces perceived threat. Same chaos, less alarm. Inflammation markers trend down when the mind can place pain inside a story that points somewhere.
When beginnings are quiet (and that’s not a failure)
You might not get applause. You might not even get relief at first. Often, beginnings feel like grief with better posture. That’s normal. The body is retiring survival strategies that kept you alive. Let them be honored before they’re replaced.
Watch for these silent green lights:
- You pause before saying “yes,” and the pause doesn’t feel like a crime.
- You notice your jaw unclench midday without forcing it.
- You sleep through at least half the night more often than not.
- You forget to hate yourself for whole sections of the day.
That’s not laziness. That’s repair.
Health angle (why this works, not just that it does)
- Cortisol: consistent boundaries + predictable rhythms flatten the spikes. Less “wired-tired,” more steady alertness.
- Sleep architecture: ritualizing evenings helps your brain drop into slow-wave sleep; memory consolidates, inflammation quiets.
- Immune repair: with the alarm system off less of the time, the body returns resources to digestion, tissue repair, hormone balance.
- Identity ↔ body loop: new choices (“I rest / I say no / I ask for help”) change self-concept. Self-concept shifts behavior. Behavior retrains physiology. That loop is how “a person who copes” becomes a person who lives.
Let’s say it plain, so you don’t forget it at 3 a.m.: Every beginning is a body relearning safety. Start small. Repeat. Let boring save your life.
A Path, Not a Finish Line
Change isn’t a detour. It’s the road itself. Every twist, every loss, every “what the hell now” moment you’ve dragged yourself through—it wasn’t you falling off the path. That was the path.
We keep waiting for the day when change slows down, when we arrive at some mythical finish line where everything finally stays steady. That line doesn’t exist. Life doesn’t stabilize; it reshapes. And the more we chase permanence, the more we miss the point: growth is motion.
So, take a second. Breathe. Ask yourself:
– Which ending are you still grieving?
– Which hallway are you walking right now, doors still closed?
– Which beginning is whispering at the edges, waiting for you to notice it?
Don’t rush the answers. Don’t shame yourself for still being mid-process. There’s no medal for pretending you’re done.
Change isn’t proof you’re lost. It’s proof you’re alive. And as long as you’re alive, the story isn’t over—you’re still writing it. Step by step. Breath by breath.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: change isn’t punishment. It’s permission.
✦ Maps for the Shifting Ground
If this piece on change left you raw or restless, don’t just scroll away. Sit with it. Feed it. Change doesn’t get easier by ignoring it — but it does get lighter when you’ve got tools, voices, and proof you’re not the only one stumbling forward.
Lifelines & Grounding (When Change Feels Too Heavy)
- SAMHSA (U.S.) – 24/7 crisis and treatment support. Call or text 988 if you’re in acute crisis; 1-800-662-HELP for mental health referrals.
- National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) – Peer-led groups and education on navigating change with mental health in mind.
- Mind (UK) – For those outside the U.S., practical guides and helplines for coping with anxiety, grief, and transitions.
Reads That Don’t Sugarcoat Change
- “Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes” by William Bridges — A roadmap for endings, middles, and beginnings.
- “Option B” by Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant — Grief and identity—navigating loss when the future is hazy.
- “The Science of Change” (Harvard Business Review) — Understand why humans resist change and ways to make it stick. (Look it up on HBR’s site.)
Fuel for the Mind & Nervous System
- Documentary: Heal — Powerful doc showing how mind-body perception can shift healing. Available on streaming platforms. Wikipedia
- Podcast: On Being with Krista Tippett — Conversations with writers, thinkers, and healers about meaning, identity, and emergence. (Search “On Being” podcast platform.)
- TED Talk: “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage” by Susan David — Why emotional agility matters more than forced positivity. TED-Ed
Try This (Gentle Suggestions to Begin Again)
- Write one short sentence at night: “What changed today?” Let yourself have messy answers.
- Try one micro-boundary this week: “I’m available until 6 p.m.” or “I’m not explaining myself today.”
- Create a tiny transition ritual: a candle, a breath, a slow exhale, or closing a journal page.
Change doesn’t hand you neat answers or perfect timing. It strips, stumbles, and remakes you—again and again. But if you’ve read this far, it means you already know: you weren’t built to stay the same. You were built to shift, to stretch, to rise, and to keep becoming. That’s not weakness—it’s the quiet evidence you’re still alive, still evolving, still here.
With grace, grit, and a love that refuses to quit.
Keep showing up—even when it feels like no one’s watching.
Your presence is powerful. Your love is building something they’ll one day thank you for.
From one traveler-in-transition to another—
With strength and softness,
JBE Mindful Pathways
Wellness Advocate | Writer | Mother | Still Learning, Always Loving
“Feel seen? You’re not alone. Explore more heartfelt reflections in the Stories from the Path collection—where real lives, real lessons, and real love leave a mark.”
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