A Gentle Return to Trust – Part 3
Since beginning the deep work of healing after my Dark Night of the Soul, I have come to realize that releasing resistance after 50 is not about becoming fearless. It’s about learning to see the walls between myself and the life I long for for what they really are.
Every boundary, chain, wall, or fence between me and the life I want for myself has usually been built by me.
Not always consciously. Not always intentionally.
But I have nevertheless built these walls from the bricks of my own fear, my own poor self-worth, my own doubt, my own need for control, and my own reluctance to do the hard and holy work of growth.
A realization like that can be hard to sit with, especially if we’ve spent years believing our lives have been shaped primarily by circumstance, timing, other people, bad luck, or a Universe that simply refused to deliver what we prayed for.
For me, there is something incredibly liberating about seeing my walls clearly.
Because if I built them, then I can also begin to take them down.
For a long time, I believed the thing standing between me and my wildest dreams was outside of me. Money. Timing. Support. Opportunity. The right door opening at the right moment in the right way.
But again and again, whenever I sat quietly with the question of why something had not unfolded in my life, I found resistance somewhere inside me.
Resistance to effort. Resistance to uncertainty. Resistance to change. Resistance to disappointment. Resistance to letting the path look different from the one I had already decided was acceptable.
And sometimes, perhaps most painfully, resistance to receiving what I most wanted because it arrived in a form I didn’t recognize.
When the Dream Didn’t Arrive the Way I Ordered It
After my Dark Night of the Soul brought me to my knees, I spent a long time trying to manifest financial stability through a lottery win. That makes me feel foolish to admit, but I was desperate and could think of no quicker way to rise from the ashes of my shattered world.
I made vision boards. I paired vivid imaginings with elevated emotion and practiced gratitude as though the money had already arrived. I believed that if I wanted it enough, aligned with it enough, and acted as though it were already here, it would have no choice but to come.
It’s the Law of the Universe, they said.
Almost seven years later, I am not a wealthy lottery winner. I do not have enough money to retire or spend the rest of my life traveling the world.
But somehow, despite that, I have manifested the prosperity and financial stability I once prayed for so desperately.
It just did not arrive in the package I ordered.
Instead of a sudden windfall, I was hired for a job that helped me step into my voice. I was given responsibility, challenge, leadership, and repeated opportunities to see that I was far more capable than I had once allowed myself to believe.
You see, for most of my career, I had felt like a fraud — quietly afraid that if I were ever truly tested, everyone would discover I didn’t know enough and that I had no real value.
But over time, I found another truth.
I did know things. I did have wisdom that was respected and sought-after. I did have a voice worth hearing. And I might never have realized that if I hadn’t found my way to this job.
The financial stability I longed for came through a long and winding path of work, discomfort, growth, and self-recognition. It came through a path of healing that allowed me to see my own worth and to speak with growing confidence and certainty.
And knowing that my own hard work resulted in the manifestation of so many of the things I once posted on my vision boards has made their attainment all the sweeter.
The Problem Wasn’t the Dream. It Was My Demand.
Looking back, I can see how much suffering came from insisting that what I wanted arrive in the exact form I had chosen.
If it didn’t look like the lottery win I fantasized about, I could not see it. If it didn’t arrive quickly, dramatically, and without effort, I assumed nothing was happening.
But something was happening.
Quietly, slowly, beneath the surface, my life was being rebuilt. I was building stability, confidence, competence, and a self I could finally trust.
Because I was staring so intently at the door I wanted the blessing to walk through, I almost missed the blessing entering through another one.
That is one of the ways resistance works. It narrows our vision until we can only recognize the answer if it arrives in the form we have already approved. It says, This way or no way. Now or never. If it doesn’t look like what I imagined, it isn’t real.
But healing has taught me that life is often wiser than my preferred timeline.
And grace rarely asks my permission before arriving in disguise.
The Dream I Delayed
After a great deal of healing, I began to feel a desire rising within me to share what I had learned. I have always been a writer of one sort or another, so writing felt like the most natural way to offer those lessons. In the fall of 2024, I decided to start a blog.
I found a name. I bought the domain. I made a list of things I wanted to write about.
And then nothing.
My inspiration dried up almost immediately. I didn’t know how to build a website, market a blog, post on social media, or turn a tender desire into something visible and real. The whole thing felt like a mountain I didn’t have the legs to climb.
So I stopped.
But the mountain was not really the problem. My fear was.
I was afraid of the hard work and the length of time it would take to build something real. I was afraid of learning something new. I was afraid of failing — of trying and discovering that what I had to say didn’t matter.
So I called it overwhelm, which was not entirely untrue.
But underneath the overwhelm was resistance.
Resistance Often Wears Reasonable Clothing
Resistance rarely announces itself dramatically. It often sounds practical, responsible, and mature.
It tells us we don’t have the time or the energy. It tells us we don’t know enough. It tells us we should wait until we feel more ready, more confident, more certain, more supported.
And sometimes, of course, we truly do need to rest, pause, gather information, or wait for a wiser moment.
But sometimes “I’m not ready” really means “I’m afraid.”
Sometimes “I don’t know where to begin” really means “I don’t want to feel like a beginner.”
Sometimes “This is too much” really means “I don’t trust myself to take the next small step.”
Resistance can look very wise until we sit with it long enough to hear the fear underneath.
Trying Again, One Small Step at a Time
In the fall of 2025, I felt the call to try again.
But this time, I did not try to climb the whole mountain in one breath. I found an online course on how to set up a blog. I created a new name more aligned with my message. I learned how to use tools that could help me build a website, generate ideas, and understand the unfamiliar terrain of sharing my work online.
Slowly, in tiny steps, I began building something sacred and important to me.
Not all at once. Not perfectly. But faithfully.
The fear that stopped me in 2024 did not magically disappear in 2025. It was still there, still whispering its doubts, still reminding me of all the ways I could fail.
The difference was that I stopped letting fear make the decisions.
I sat with my resistance. I listened to what it was trying to protect me from. I made the next step small enough that my nervous system could follow it.
And then I did it again.
That is how many sacred things are built. Not through certainty or fearlessness, but through willingness.
What Resistance Is Really Telling Us
Allowing truth into the room — as I wrote about in Part 2: Allowing After 50 — is powerful work. It ends the self-abandonment. We stop telling ourselves we don’t know what we know. We stop pretending our intuition hasn’t been speaking to us all along — as I explored in Part 1: Trusting Your Intuition After 50.
But once truth has been allowed in, another question eventually rises.
Now what?
That is where resistance appears. It’s the wall that keeps us from acting on what we finally know. It doesn’t always argue with truth. Sometimes it simply tries to keep truth from changing the status quo, because the known is less frightening than the unknown.
This does not mean all resistance is unhealthy. There is sacred resistance too. It is right to resist what is unjust, harmful, or not ours to carry. That kind of resistance protects life.
But inner resistance — the wall we build against our own becoming — is different.
When I feel despair, resentment, or an inner sense of separation from the peace I’ve carefully cultivated, I’ve learned to pause. Not because those feelings are wrong, but because they are usually pointing toward something I am resisting.
Usually, I’m resisting the fact that life is not unfolding on my timeline. Or I’m resisting a lesson I do not want to learn. Or I’m resisting the humble truth that the next step is not dramatic at all.
It is simply mine to take.
Wishing Is Not the Same as Becoming
Many of us reach a point in midlife when we can no longer pretend not to know.
We know the relationship is draining us. We know the career has become too small or too costly. We know the dream still matters. We know the life we are living no longer fully fits the woman we are becoming.
But knowing is not the same as moving.
There was a time when I wanted life to change without requiring much change from me. I wanted the result without the reaching. I wanted the blessing without the stretching. I wanted the dream to arrive fully formed, without forcing me to confront my fears, doubts, or beliefs that I was not capable or worthy.
But life has been teaching me something different.
Wishing may reveal what we long for, but doing is what really changes things. Not frantic work. Not self-punishing work. But grounded, faithful, honest effort that keeps us moving in the right direction — as many baby steps as needed before we can start to build momentum.
The kind that admits fear is present and takes one small step anyway.
The Practice of Meeting Resistance
When resistance rises in me now, I know it’s not the enemy. I like seeing how flimsy it really is — like a blanket I’ve pulled over my head when the morning sun wants to push me from my bed before I’m ready.
I try to sit beside it.
I ask what it’s afraid of, what it’s protecting me from. I ask whether it’s warning me of true harm or simply trying to keep me inside an old familiar cage.
Sometimes resistance needs reassurance. Sometimes it needs a plan. Sometimes it needs me to make the next step even smaller.
And sometimes it needs me to say, gently but firmly: Thank you for trying to protect me. But you don’t get to lead anymore.
That is powerful healing. Not the absence of fear, but the reordering of authority within ourselves.
A Gentle Invitation
Today, I am blogging regularly, despite a full-time career. I have plans for a book. I have plans for a fall pilgrimage to France to welcome my new life as an empty nester. I am taking on things I once only dreamed about — not because I no longer feel fear, but because I have stopped treating fear as a final answer.
And through it all, I’ve begun to feel quite powerful. Like there is nothing between me and all that I seek, except the walls I build myself. Walls I now regularly tear down before they even have time to grow.
So I offer you the same questions I have had to ask myself.
What truth have you finally allowed into the room? And what resistance is keeping you from acting on it?
Is there a dream that would bring you deep fulfillment, but you’ve convinced yourself you don’t have the time, money, support, or worthiness to begin? Is there a relationship, role, or habit that is slowly draining you, but you believe it’s too late to make a change? Is there some part of you that knows the next step, even if the whole path remains hidden in shadows?
Be gentle with the fear. But don’t hand it the keys.
The wall between you and what you seek may not be proof that the dream is impossible. It may simply be asking to be acknowledged, understood, and slowly dismantled — brick by brick, step by step, with trembling hands and a trusting heart.
In Part 4 of A Gentle Return to Trust, I’ll be writing about trust and surrender — not as passivity or helplessness, but as the sacred practice of continuing forward with open hands when the path is still unfolding.
