A Time to Grow, A Time to Follow
After separation, life feels like a puzzle with no picture on the box. You have all the pieces, scattered, sharp-edged, and unfamiliar—and no idea where to begin. Some days you try to put them together. Other days you just stare at them, overwhelmed by the chaos. And often, you find yourself doing both at the same time: trying to grow, while your body is still trying to survive.
This is the contradiction so many face after trauma or conflict. You want to move forward. You want clarity, direction, answers. But your nervous system isn’t on the same page. It’s on high alert—watching for threats, scanning for danger, rehearsing worst-case scenarios. You’re stuck in fight or flight, or freeze or fawn. And no matter how much your logical brain wants to grow and build, your body still believes it’s not safe yet.
So, you spiral.
You start chasing growth with desperation. Buying books, signing up for courses, watching videos, talking to experts—hoping that one of them will click everything into place. But when we try to grow from a place of fear, we can’t absorb the very tools we’re reaching for. The energy of panic and urgency blocks the clarity we need to integrate and change.
This doesn’t mean you’re failing.
It means you’re human.
It means your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you. But growth can’t happen when protection is the main goal. You can’t rebuild when your system is still barricading the windows.
So what do you do?
You pause. You breathe. You give yourself grace.
Because there is a time to grow and create. But there is also a time to follow.
When your system is overloaded, when nothing makes sense, when your thoughts race and your energy crashes—it’s not the time to reinvent your life. It’s the time to follow gentle instruction. To allow yourself to be guided. To put one foot in front of the other, even if you don’t know where the path leads yet.
And yes, that might mean writing things down.
That might mean getting a coach.
That might mean following a checklist, or a journal prompt, or a morning routine someone else designed.
Not because they have your answers—but because you don’t need more decisions to make right now.
You need relief from the mental traffic jam. You need structure, rhythm, predictability. You need to do something without needing to know why, without needing the outcome first. You need the freedom to act without pressure to fix.
When you follow instruction during dysregulation, you're not giving up your autonomy. You're giving your system a chance to settle so your autonomy can return.
It’s like driving at night in a storm. You don’t need to know the whole route. You just need to see the next few metres. That’s enough. Eventually, the storm clears. Your vision returns. And with a calm system, your creativity and insight start to flow again.
So if you're in a place right now where growing feels impossible, but you still feel the urge to change—don’t try to leap forward. Don’t try to force clarity. Just follow. Just walk. Just take the next step.
Let the structure hold you until your strength returns.
Because your time to grow will come.
But today—maybe it’s your time to be carried, one instruction at a time.