The Quiet Fear of Not Knowing Your Next Chapter.
I don’t think I’ve ever really known where I belonged.
Even as a kid, I remember looking at other people and wondering how they just… fit. They had a thing. A direction. A sense of self. I always felt like I was standing in a hallway full of doors, waiting for one to make sense.
And then I became a mom.
Everyone talks about motherhood like it’s supposed to anchor you—like the moment you have a child, everything locks into place. But I think it just gave me new places to hide my uncertainty. I poured myself into being “Mom,” hoping it would erase the question of who I was before that, and who I was supposed to become after.
Now I’m 30, and I’m realizing that the feeling I kept trying to outrun wasn’t confusion—it was the quiet ache of not being connected to myself.
The weird part? Writing is what brought that realization out of hiding.
I didn’t wake up one day with a plan or purpose. I just started typing things I’d never said out loud. Things like:
“I feel lost, but I don’t want to stay that way.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever known what home feels like inside myself.”
“I’m scared that nothing will change, but also scared that it might.”
And women started responding. Not with solutions, not with judgment—but with this soft chorus of, “Same. I feel that too.”
I didn’t expect that. I’ve spent most of my life convinced I was the only one who felt this unsettled. The only one who pretended to be fine while secretly wondering when life was going to “start making sense.”
But now I’m starting to think maybe not knowing what comes next doesn’t mean you’re failing—it just means you’re still alive enough to feel the gap between where you are and where you’re meant to be.
I don’t have a map. I don’t have a five-year vision board. I still question myself more than I probably should. But writing these words—sharing them with women who are carrying their own version of this weight—feels like the first time in my life I’m not just wandering… I’m becoming.
Maybe that’s the whole point.
Maybe “what’s next” isn’t something we’re supposed to know in advance. Maybe it reveals itself when we finally stop pretending we’re not lost.
And if all I ever do is make one woman feel less alone in the not-knowing… then maybe this is where I was always supposed to be starting.