There’s a question I hear whispered in discovery calls, typed hesitantly in DMs, and spoken quietly at the end of sessions:
“But what if I let go of these patterns, what if I change, and there’s… nothing better on the other side (and secretly, what if it’s worse)?”
I get it. The patterns that got you here have worked. They’ve kept you safe. They’ve made you successful. They’ve earned you respect, money, recognition. Don’t rock the boat, right?
Except… you can feel what it’s costing you.
The disconnection from your own desires. The relationships that feel surface-level. The success that somehow feels hollow. The constant doing that has replaced any sense of being. The ‘meh’ when you know it should be ‘YES!!!’
You want to believe there’s more on the other side of a major life change. But it’s also a leap of faith into the unknown.
So let me tell you about life after transformation. Not as a fairy tale, but as lived experience. As someone who stood exactly where you’re standing and chose transformation over safety.
When Italy Said Yes: Trusting Myself Through Life-Changing Transformation
Two years ago, I made a decision that, on the surface, didn’t make any sense: I was moving to Italy.
Not for a holiday. Not for a few months. I was uprooting my entire life and relocating to a country where I didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the systems, and had no safety net waiting.
This was choosing change in the most radical way possible.
The logical obstacles were massive. The digital nomad visa that would make it possible? Legal professionals told me Italy would never approve it. The bureaucracy was legendary, nightmare stories everywhere I looked. Expats shared horror tales of waiting months for simple documents, of being sent from office to office with no resolution.
But something in me knew. Something deeper than logic, stronger than fear. A quiet voice that said: This is your path. Trust it.
And then… Italy opened up.
The visa I needed materialised, you know the one that “would never happen.” Every condition I required for success aligned like puzzle pieces clicking into place. The so-called nightmare bureaucracy? It flowed. Doors opened before I even knocked. Papers processed in days instead of months. Officials were helpful, kind even. Things that “never happen” in Italy happened for me.
Not because I forced them. Not because I hustled harder or controlled better.
Because I was finally aligned. Because I had released the pattern of pushing and started trusting myself.
I remember standing in the immigration office, paperwork approved, and feeling tears prick my eyes. This was what life after choosing change looked like: ease where I expected struggle. Support where I expected resistance. Flow where I’d been taught to force.
The Softening That Made Me Stronger: What Personal Transformation Actually Looks Like
Italy has done something to me I didn’t expect: it’s taught me to soften.
Me, aka the capable one, the strong one, the one who could handle anything. The one who prided herself on never needing help, never showing weakness, never stopping.
Here, I’ve learned to slow down. To linger over morning coffee instead of gulping it while answering emails. To be moved to tears by the light hitting the lake at sunset. To let emotion wash through me without needing to control it, fix it, or make it productive.
I sit in the piazza and watch life unfold. I feel the ancient stones beneath my feet and let myself be held by something older and wiser than my survival patterns. I say “non lo so”, I don’t know, without shame. I ask for help. I receive compliments without deflecting. I rest without earning it first.
And here’s what nobody tells you about choosing transformation: softening doesn’t make you weaker. It makes you infinitely stronger.
When you’re not constantly bracing against life, you have energy for what actually matters. When you’re not performing strength, you access real power, the kind that doesn’t deplete you. When you stop white-knuckling control, you can finally receive the support, love, and opportunities that have been trying to reach you all along.
The depth of my life now? I can’t quantify it. I don’t have adequate words.
My heart literally swells with love and gratitude, not as a fleeting feeling, but as my baseline. I wake up in what feels like a dream life, except it’s real, and I’m fully present for every moment of it. The colours are more vivid. The connections more profound. The joy more accessible.
This is what’s on the other side of major life change: not vulnerability that weakens you, but presence that strengthens you. This is what personal transformation actually looks like in daily life.
Choosing Myself Over and Over: The Birthday That Tested My Transformation
Last weekend I celebrated my 40th birthday here in Italy, and it became the most perfect demonstration of what choosing yourself actually looks like in practice.
A few months ago, I had a vision, a feeling, for what I wanted my birthday to be like. A room filled with love and laughter, incredible food and music, a truly heartfelt celebration. Not the small, downplayed version I’d done before. Something real. Something worthy of celebration.
I sent out the invitations.
And then… weeks went by with no firm replies.
My head started spinning: “See, you know you shouldn’t have done this. No one is going to show up.”
“Who do you think you are? You’ve spent 15 years investing in no one apart from your business and immediate family. Who would even care enough about you?”
“Just pull the plug now before you have to deal with the inevitable embarrassment.”
The old patterns were loud. Every survival strategy I’d ever used was screaming at me to backtrack, to make myself small, to protect myself from disappointment.
But I held my ground. I kept leaning into my dream. This is what trusting yourself looks like when the inner critic is screaming.
After helping at a friend’s party over the summer, I’d found the most incredible singer and musician. I knew, knew, I wanted them at my birthday celebration. So I asked. They said yes.
And then they told me how much they charge.
My mind went off on one again: “That’s too much money.” “Who do you think you are?!” “This will be even more of a failure if they end up playing to a room of four people!”
This was touching my ‘enoughness’ nerve, and my default was to backtrack. To say I don’t need it. I can go without. I’ll make do with less.
But here’s what the past 20 years of life, and my journey through burnout, has taught me about choosing change:
That inner guiding light, that spark of desire that sets my heart and soul on fire, is EVERYTHING.
I can literally track the ‘magic’ of my life based on whether I’ve listened to and followed that spark or not. Every time I’ve honoured it, life has opened up. Every time I’ve ignored it, I’ve ended up depleted, disconnected, lost.
So I said yes. To my desire. To the three-course meal. To the cake. To the musicians. I leaned in and trusted myself even when my head was screaming at me to play it safe.
And then, two weeks before the party? Confirmed yeses flooded in.
As for the night itself? It was so far above what I had envisioned.
So many priceless moments. So much love. So much connection. It filled my soul in a way I cannot explain. And for my family who couldn’t be there? An outpouring of the most incredible love and care I have ever experienced.
It’s strange to experience emotional overwhelm in the best way possible after being so disconnected from emotion in order to survive for so long.
And then there was the moment Anna, the singer, grabbed me by the hand to sing with her.
I’m not a singer, or more accurately, I don’t have a voice anyone would enjoy listening to, but for the first time, I didn’t feel embarrassed or afraid. I embraced the moment. I allowed myself to get swept up in the magic of it all.
It reminded me of what I teach in Module 3 of my course about reclaiming your voice. It felt full circle somehow, like the preparation for my birthday was testing my transformation, and the party itself was a celebration of it.
This is the journey of trusting yourself again after major life change. The old self and the inner critic can easily crop up, they still do, but they don’t have to run the show anymore when you’re committed to choosing yourself.
There is a ‘true you’ that exists beyond all of them. A you that you can ground into, that can guide you through. A you that knows what you truly desire and deserves to have it.
The Business That Rose from the Ashes: Building Success Through Transformation
And then there’s the big one: launching a business again after the last one burnt me out so completely I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover.
The fear was real. What if it happened again? What if I rebuilt the same cage with different bars? What if I fell back into the patterns of overgiving, overworking, over-functioning until there was nothing left of me?
I’d spent years healing from that burnout. Years learning that my worth wasn’t tied to my productivity. Years remembering who I was beneath the doing.
The thought of starting again felt like standing at the edge of a fire I’d barely survived the first time.
But here’s what’s different now: I’m different. This is what life-changing transformation actually means.
I don’t create from depletion anymore. I create from overflow, from the fullness of a life that nourishes me. I don’t hustle from fear of not being enough. I move from alignment with what wants to emerge through me. I don’t perform success to prove my worth. I embody wholeness and let my work flow from that.
My business now is built on completely different foundations. I work three weeks on, one week off. I create resources that light me up. I say yes to the musicians even when my old patterns scream it’s too much. I charge what I’m worth. I rest without guilt. I let my life feed my work instead of my work consuming my life.
And the result? I create at a prolific rate, not from forcing, but from flow. My impact is the most it’s ever been because my work goes deeper. It goes deeper because I’ve gone deeper.
This business isn’t just sustainable. It’s life-giving. It’s proof that you can build success without sacrificing yourself on the altar of achievement. This is what choosing yourself in business actually looks like.
What’s Actually Waiting on the Other Side of Transformation
When you’re standing at the edge of major life transformation, it’s hard to imagine what’s actually waiting. You know what you’re leaving behind, but life after change? That feels like a mystery, maybe even terrifying.
Here’s what choosing transformation over staying safe actually looks like:
Aliveness- The kind that makes you feel like you’ve been sleepwalking through your own life and finally, finally woke up. Where you taste your food instead of mindlessly eating. Where you feel the sun on your skin and it moves you. Where you’re present for your own life instead of watching it pass by.
Permission- To want what you want. To celebrate yourself. To say yes to the three-course meal and the musicians. To take up space. To be seen. To receive love without immediately deflecting or trying to even the score. This is what choosing yourself unlocks.
Inspiration- Not the forced, manufactured kind that requires three cups of coffee and sheer willpower. The kind that bubbles up naturally because you’re connected to your source. Ideas that wake you up at 3am (in a good way). Creative flow that feels like channeling something greater than yourself. That ripples out further into the world than you could ever imagine.
Depth- In your relationships: real intimacy instead of surface-level connection. In your work: meaningful impact instead of busy-ness. In your daily experience: everything becomes richer, more textured, more real. A conversation over coffee becomes sacred. A walk becomes meditation. Ordinary moments become extraordinary.
Pleasure- On a level you didn’t know was possible. Not just physical, though yes, absolutely that too! But the pleasure of being fully present. Of feeling your feelings without needing to fix or change them. Of experiencing beauty without needing to capture or control it. Of singing even when you can’t carry a tune, just because the moment calls for it.
Meaningful impact- Not the performative kind that exhausts you and leaves you wondering if any of it matters. The kind that flows from who you are, not what you do. Where your presence alone creates transformation. Where your work feels like a natural extension of your being.
Love- For yourself: the kind that doesn’t waver based on productivity or perfection. For others: deeper, more authentic, less conditional. For life itself: a love so big it spills over into everything. Where gratitude isn’t something you practice but something you embody.
The Leap Is Real. So Is What’s Waiting.
I won’t lie to you: the leap into major life change is real. There’s a moment, or many moments, where you’re in the in-between. Where the old patterns are dissolving but the new way hasn’t fully formed yet.
It’s uncomfortable. It’s uncertain. It requires trusting yourself when you’ve been taught to rely on control.
The inner critic will show up. The voice that says you’re too much, not enough, who do you think you are. The fear that no one will show up, that you’ll be left embarrassed and alone.
But here’s what I know now, standing on this side with tears of gratitude in my eyes:
Choosing change isn’t letting go into nothing. It’s letting go into everything.
The patterns that got you here were survival strategies. They served you brilliantly. They kept you safe when you needed safety. But they were never meant to be your forever home. They were the cocoon, not the butterfly.
On the other side of transformation isn’t emptiness. It’s fullness. It’s you, the real you, finally coming home to yourself. The you who’s been waiting patiently beneath all those protective layers. The you who knows exactly what’s possible when you stop performing and start being.
The you who throws herself a 40th birthday party even when the voices say she shouldn’t. Who hires the musicians even when it feels like too much. Who sings even though she can’t carry a tune. Who receives love without deflecting. Who trusts her spark.
This is what life-changing transformation actually means, not losing yourself, but finally finding yourself.
And that version of you? She’s been waiting. She’s ready. She knows exactly what’s calling you forward.
If you’re standing at the edge of major life change, feeling the heat of transformation calling you forward but afraid to let go…
I see you. I’ve been you. I know that fear intimately.
And I’m here to tell you: the other side is worth it.
Every uncomfortable moment. Every leap of faith. Every time you choose yourself even when it feels impossible. Every time you say yes to your desire even when the voices scream at you to play small.
Worth it. All of it.
You haven’t come this far to only come this far.
Ready to discover what’s waiting for you on the other side of transformation? Let’s talk. No pressure. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about what’s possible when you finally choose yourself.
Book a connection call or simply hit reply and tell me: what would become possible if you released what’s no longer serving you?
With wholehearted love,Debs 💛
P.S. If this resonates but you’re not ready for 1:1 work yet, my podcast “Rooted in Wholeness” explores these themes every week. And the free companion guide gives you practices to start softening into your own transformation. Because you don’t have to do this alone.