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From Ione

Finding your footing in transition.

On career shifts, new chapters, and the ground shifting beneath you.

People often come to me in the middle of a transition rather than at its start, already partway through a career change, a move, a promotion, a layoff, a divorce, or the quiet realization that the life they built no longer fits. By the time we talk, they're usually exhausted from trying to figure it out alone.

Why transitions feel harder than they should

Psychologist William Bridges, whose model of transition is widely used in counselling and organizational work, described this as the "neutral zone," the disorienting middle stage between an ending and a new beginning. Transitions are disorienting not because something is wrong with you, but because they ask you to let go of an identity before a new one has fully formed. You're no longer who you were, and not yet who you're becoming. That in-between space is uncomfortable by nature. It doesn't mean you're doing it badly.

Add to that the pressure many people feel to have a clear plan, a confident answer, a five-year vision, and the discomfort of not knowing can start to feel like failure. It isn't. Not knowing yet is often just where you actually are.

What actually helps

I know this in-between space personally. When I left a marriage that was no longer serving who I was becoming, I felt ready, but I quickly realized there were things I had never had to do fully on my own. In that relationship, I had carried most of the responsibility. Now I was carrying all of it. I didn't have a five-year plan for who I'd become. What I had was one honest day at a time: noticing what actually felt true, leaning on people who cared about me, and slowly building a life defined not by lacking a partner, but by gaining my own perspective and independence.

That's the same approach I bring into sessions. I rarely start by asking "what's the plan." I start by asking what's actually true right now. What feels heavy, what feels like relief, what you're avoiding looking at directly. Clarity tends to come from being honest about the present, not from forcing a vision of the future before you're ready.

For some people, that work is more coaching in nature: practical, forward-focused, building momentum toward a decision already taking shape. For others, the transition has stirred up something deeper, like grief, identity, or old patterns, and counselling is the better fit. Neither is a lesser path. It depends on what's actually happening underneath the transition.

A place to start

If you're in the middle of a transition right now, try asking yourself one honest question: what am I most afraid this change means about me? Not what should I do next. Just what does this stir up. That answer usually points toward what actually needs attention before any plan will feel solid.