The Illusion of Control

For most of my life, I've made really big decisions quickly and easily. I've moved across the country on a whim without much thought or planning multiple times. I've started businesses, shifted careers, and blown up everything I knew as if it were as simple as choosing what's for dinner.

But small decisions? Simple ones? Those have never been easy for me.

I realize now that a lot of that — at least until I was about forty — was driven by anxiety. The little decisions took everything from me while the big ones felt effortless. It doesn't make sense on the surface. But when you understand the difference between the familiar and the unknown, it becomes painfully clear.

The Lie About Safety

The familiar has never felt safe to me. Relationships with family, significant others, even some of my closest friends have lacked a sense of safety — not because of anything nefarious, but because of some underlying core wounds that were running the show long before I knew they existed.

When we think about the familiar, we usually think of safety. We believe the familiar is where we're protected and the unknown is where danger lives. So we stay where we are. We grip tighter. We control harder.

The familiar isn't where safety lives. It's where control lives. And control is not safety — even if we've convinced ourselves it is.

The unknown? That's where surrender lives. And surrender is where real safety actually is — even if everything we've been told says otherwise.

The Surrender

I'm sharing this because I'm in a space of surrender right now. Full, radical, terrifying surrender.

The universe has made it unmistakably clear that three things need to happen for me to step into what's next: Close my for-profit business. Let go of my two most important relationships. Move out of my home.

All three. At the same time. No negotiating.

My two most important relationships have recently ended for different reasons, leaving me with some of the deepest wounding I've ever experienced while also allowing me to see the most magnificent healing. One ending with an email and no goodbye, the other going back and forth only to require a final answer due to two people being too hurt to heal together.

My landlady decided she's selling my house, so I took that as a note from the Universe to pack up everything I own and step into a nomadic life with no fixed address, no predictable income, and no five-year plan. I'm creating space for myself to step into my own energy system — AKA nervous system — from a place of understanding and growth. Not from stability. From surrender to the unknown.

My business has hit a stopping point and my surrender has shown me that it's best not to continue on in the career I've held and morphed for 25 years. For much of my life, I put in place five-year plans and one-year plans and six-month projections. Outcomes. Ideas about what's next. None of them came out the way I planned. The more I controlled, the more things didn't work. The more I let go, the more things dropped into place better than I could have ever imagined.

And so I have this knowing: if I can release everything that is not for me anymore, I can truly step into this next phase without being forced into some small role that I think is best for me — when the entire Universe/God/Source/Spirit and my higher self are leading me somewhere so much bigger. A place of knowing. A place of love. A place of support. A place of regulation.

The Old Friend

If I look back at every moment I surrendered, everything worked out better than I could have ever planned.

That's anxiety — that old friend of mine — trying to convince me that surrender is the illusion. While my higher self sits quietly, reminding me that I can just let go. That my plans are so small compared to the ones God has for me. The ones the The Universe is already putting in motion. I just have to take the next right step. I just have to believe that everything will work out.

That's not easy for someone who has been firmly in control for a very long time.

Except — looking back, I realize I haven't been in control of any of it. I let other people tell me what to do. I let other people scare me into launching things I didn't want to do. I let other people push me into creating things I never wanted to create because I was afraid that if I didn't, I would end up without money. Without a home. Without relationships. Without status. Without whatever fill-in-the-blank I thought I needed at the time.

And oh, look… it has now happened. For my highest and best.