NOT KNOWING IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING STUCK
I sat with a group of women recently and heard some version of the same sentence more than once: I feel stuck.
But as we stayed with it, I began noticing something. Often the stuckness was not an absence of movement or possibility. It was the mind asking for certainty before it would allow movement.
I have to get this right.
Other women seem to know what they mean.
I cannot say this until it is clearer.
I should understand what is happening before I speak.
The mind can make polish feel like permission. It can convince us that everyone else received a map we somehow missed.
But life does not become certain because we have thought about it long enough.
We can know something deeply and still not know what will happen next. We can be unsure and still say one honest sentence. We can begin and discover what we mean while we are moving.
Sometimes clarity comes because we participate.
Because we speak before the sentence is perfect.
Because we hear ourselves say something aloud.
Because we try something and notice what it gives back.
Because we let an unfinished thought be unfinished.
This does not mean the mind is the enemy. The mind is extraordinary. It organizes, protects, predicts and tries to keep us from getting it wrong.
But thought is not always clarity. A story repeated often enough can begin to feel like a fact.
Maybe the invitation is not to force ourselves forward.
Maybe it is simply to stop requiring certainty before we allow ourselves to be here.
You do not have to know yet.
You are still allowed to speak.
You are still allowed to choose.
You are still allowed to participate in your own life.