Nobody Tells You This Part.

I had a bad week last week. I’m not going to tell you why, the details don’t matter. What matters is that something went wrong: unexpectedly, unfairly, in a way I hadn’t seen coming. And it floored me more than it should have. More than it would have done a few years ago. That’s what I’ve been sitting with. Not the problem. My response to it.

The old me, the business owner making decisions under pressure, would have absorbed this, processed it, moved on. A day, maybe two. This took much longer. And I’ve been honest enough with myself to ask why.

I’ve helped build and lead several businesses. The road wasn’t smooth. There were failures, wrong turns, things that didn’t work out. But even in the difficult moments, I knew what to do next. I’d been here before, or somewhere close enough. And every time I navigated through, something got reinforced: you know how to do this. Not arrogance. Just quiet competence, built up over years of experience. I didn’t realise until now how much I relied on it.

This chapter is different. Retirement sounds simple from the outside: you stop, you breathe, you’re free. But transitioning into it is its own learning curve, and nobody tells you that. I’m building something new, from scratch, in territory I’m still figuring out. That quiet certainty doesn’t come with it. I don’t always know the next step. And when something goes wrong, there’s no deep well of I’ve handled worse to draw from. Not yet. So when something hits, it hits differently. It sits longer.

I used to think I was resilient. I’m starting to wonder if I just always knew which way to turn. That’s a hard thing to write. Harder still to publish.

I tell my kids – ‘s**t happens, accept it, move on’. Good advice. Easy to give. Harder to live when you’re the one in it.

What I’m learning, slowly, is that moving on doesn’t have to be fast. Sitting with something difficult isn’t the same as being defeated by it. Resilience in this chapter might look completely different to what it looked like before. Maybe that’s what this season asks of us — to accept that we’re more vulnerable than we were, and in being so, more human.

I’m not where I want to be yet. But I’m still here, still writing, still choosing to believe this chapter is worth it. That has to count for something.

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