Dear Amy,
First — please do not apologize for the time. We are on your schedule, not mine. These posts are intensive, and they take real energy — emotional and mental. You are also parenting a sick child through all of this. Take the time you need. This thread will always be here, and so will I.
I want to name something gently: the impulse to apologize for having needs? That connects directly to what you asked me. It is part of the same pattern as the fear of disappearing. When we apologize for taking up space, for being human, for needing time — we are already practicing erasure on ourselves. So let this be a small place to practice something different: you needed to care for your son. You did. Life intrudes, so no apology is necessary.
Now for your real question. You said you feel like you are still fighting the reality of change and you don't know how to stand inside of it. I want to honor that question because it is an important one.
Here is what I have learned — from my own life, from thirty years of walking alongside people through transition, and from watching hundreds of partners navigate exactly where you are:
Standing inside change is not a skill you learn once. It is a practice you return to. It is more like balance than like a destination — you don't arrive. You keep adjusting.
But there are things that help:
When you notice yourself bracing against what is happening — the tightness in your chest, the racing thoughts, the urge to control or predict — try pausing and naming it. Not fixing it. Just naming it. "I am scared right now." "I don't know what this means yet." "This is uncomfortable and I am still here." That naming is standing inside it.
When you catch yourself trying to figure out the whole future at once — where this goes, who Cynthia becomes, what your marriage will look like in five years — try pulling back to today. Not because the future doesn't matter, but because you cannot stand inside something that hasn't happened yet. You can only stand inside now.
When grief comes — and it will, in waves, because transition involves real loss even when it also brings real gain — let it come. Do not judge it. Do not rush it. Grief and love can exist in the same breath. Letting yourself grieve what is changing does not mean you are against the change. It means you are human.
And here is maybe the most important thing: you said you feel like you are still fighting. That word — still — carries judgment. As if by now you should have stopped. Amy, you have been in this for weeks, not years. Fighting is what the nervous system does when it perceives threat to something it loves. You are not failing because your body is still activated. You are a person whose entire life framework shifted, and your system is still catching up. That is normal. That is expected.
Standing inside change does not mean the fight disappears. It means you stop punishing yourself for the fight. It means you let it be there — and choose your next small act anyway.
You are already doing this more than you realize. Every time you write here, every time you choose honesty with Cynthia, every time you show up to therapy, every time you pause and reflect instead of react — you are practicing standing inside it.
The fact that it still feels like fighting does not mean you are failing. It means you are early. And early is exactly where you are supposed to be. Keep going, because you are doing this.
With love,
— Susan 💜
