Isn’t it amazing how life shifts. What you once considered essential, fulfilling, and right can change so quickly? It’s almost surreal. What once felt certain can change in an instant. One moment, everything feels familiar and predictable, and the next, a single event, or a new opportunity, a new role, an unexpected loss, or a chance encounter can in fact shift everything.

Of course, life is always in motion. It twists and turns in unexpected ways. Jobs evolve, relationships transform, priorities realign. Sometimes we see the change coming; other times it hits like a thunderclap, unannounced and unforgiving. A chance encounter, a new opportunity, an unexpected loss… any one moment can recalibrate your entire trajectory. The hardest part to realize is those plans we carefully map out can be rewritten in a heartbeat, reminding us how little control we truly have.

And what complicates it further are the emotions we carry: the attachments, the pride in our work, the fear of failure, the comfort of the familiar. These elements can make change feel like a betrayal of everything we believed we were.

I had been in my most recent role for many years. Before that, I had worked in education for over 30 years as a teacher, an identity I held close and one I thought would be my professional path forever. Then, life tossed me a curveball, and I stepped into an entirely new industry. It was unfamiliar, unexpected, and frankly, overwhelming. But I adapted. I learned. I made mistakes, owned them, grew from them. I became a manager. I took care of patients. I supported the staff. I loved what I did. Not every day was easy, there were challenges, frustrations, and yes, the occasional wine (and whine) at the end of a long day, but it was fulfilling. I felt purpose. I had a work family. I relished my role and my relationships with my working family. And I truly loved it.

And then everything changed.

The business was sold. A new management team took over. My role shifted, my influence vanished. Yes, I expected that. It had to, and I accepted that my status and the role I once had was now gone! But not quite how it did!

Tell me, how do you react when the new hierarchy comes in and begins to slowly inform you that the way you did things over these many years, some of the tasks completed or achieved in the past 16 years has been ‘wrong’. That what you had attained all those years, what you had undertaken, what you had accomplished with a happy satisfied clientele and content family style staff was ‘incorrect.’

How do you respond when someone with far less experience and much, much shorter tenure than yourself indicates that your extensive years of experience, service, and success are not relevant?

When you’re no longer invited to meetings, no longer consulted, no longer trained on systems critical to your role? When you’re relegated to a back office, hidden away like an old trophy gathering dust?

What do you do when instead being involved with the expected changes occurring, no training of the new software, no conversations except sickly sweet ones inquiring as to how you are going, and you are basically relegated to your back office. Believe me, being kept in the dark in this back office can feel isolating and frustrating, working hard behind the scenes but not being truly involved. Of course, you know that has happened because of the changes. So, you continue to put in the effort, keep things running smoothly, and yet, you feel like you are not sure of what is really happening. It is actually quite a tough spot, pushed to one side, your emails scrutinized, continuing to do your new role, but feeling on one hand totally invisible or on the other, constantly watched. Over time, this exclusion can lead to disengagement and make you question your purpose.

My personality is laughing! So I did. I kept laughing and shrugging my shoulders and continue in my new role until I didn’t! There comes a point when you just cannot laugh it off anymore—when the jokes that once softened the weight of things no longer feel funny, and the forced smiles start to feel exhausted. The small comments, the mounting frustrations that you used to brush aside begin to feel heavier, harder to ignore. You start to feel invisible. At first, you cope. You laugh. You tell yourself you’re being dramatic. You say, “It’s fine.”

Until it isn’t!

The smile eventually cracked.

It is quite a sobering moment when you realize that pretending everything is fine isn’t working anymore. And it really begins to hurt. Instead of masking the pain with your usual grace and humour, you are left facing it head-on, unsure of how to move forward. You begin to look at the past where you were so happy and begin to doubt how you got there. Worse still, you start to doubt yourself. That is the awful part.

Do you know that when you doubt yourself, it is a quiet creeping force that slowly erodes your confidence and holds you back. It made me second-guess my decisions, hesitate when I should act, and sometimes even settle for less than I actually deserve. I began to think I had indeed been inaccurate. And the longer you allow this to take root, the harder it becomes to trust yourself again. Sadly, I started doing that! The erosion of self-belief.

That was when I knew: I had to stop.

I had to remember who I was.

Because self-doubt is a silent thief. It doesn’t steal your skills or your accomplishments, it steals your perception of them. And if you let it, it keeps you small. I couldn’t let that happen.

Who knows why all this happened, and why I was treated that way? Perhaps I was seen as a threat to the new management? After all, change is hard for absolutely everyone involved, the old and the new, because it disrupts the norm of comfort and stability of the familiar. Maybe control was the factor. We humans are creatures of habit, and our routines provide a sense of security, making any shift in that ‘normal’ routine feel uncomfortable or even threatening. I may never truly understand the reason why. What I did know was that I had to acknowledge my strengths and to reevaluate where I was.

Letting go of a chapter you loved is never easy. There was grief. There was relief. There was reflection. And there was growth. Maybe that was the first step in this whole progression, to acknowledge there are times when some feelings aren’t meant to be laughed away, that these feelings and their impact deserve to be felt, processed, and eventually reconciled and to address all of this.I began to focus on the ‘where to from here’ and that made it somewhat easier that even though I had gone through the grieving process, the self-doubting spiral, I needed to let go of what had been and what was, and step into the what is next. It did not mean everything was perfect or that I had everything figured out, far from it. I still don’t! Rather, I found a semblance of peace of recognizing how far I actually had come, of embracing the present, of trusting that I was exactly where I needed to be for that moment in time- precisely where I was.

So I started over. No, not with a new job right away, but with myself. I reminded myself of the years of growth, the four triannual 100% accreditation results, the trust I had earned from staff and clients alike. I didn’t get it all wrong. In fact, I got a lot right. And slowly, piece by piece, I began to believe that again.

With the help of my husband, my faith, and a bit of stubborn resilience, I regrouped. I didn’t magically wake up one day full of confidence, but day by day, I shook off the doubt. I saw who I was, what I did, and I knew I did a damn good job!

Interestingly, not long after I left, all of my former colleagues left too. Every single one of them. That says something, doesn’t it?

Now, a few months on, I find myself in a different place. Not just physically or professionally, but emotionally. I am also surprised that I doubted myself so significantly. In my moment of vulnerability, one individual's actions made me feel that way. It is unfortunate that this occurred, but it serves as a reminder of my human nature. But I have now returned to the core of who I am: positive, self-assured, and yes, still laughing. I don’t know exactly what comes next and that’s okay. What is the most important thing is I am still me. And I intend to stay that way.

To anyone going through something similar: It’s okay to grieve the loss of what once was. It’s okay to feel the sting of self-doubt. Just don’t unpack and live there. Remind yourself of your value. Your story didn’t end. it just turned a page.

Trust me, the next chapter still has plenty of room for pleasure, delight, growth, and maybe even a bit or preferably a lot of laughter along the way.