What I Wish I Knew About Transitions
Trail Notes | Real Talk
a member recount
What I Wish I Knew
about transitions
When I joined Her Trails, I thought the challenge would be the running. What surprised me most was how much the trail mirrored the transitions I was already living through.
The climbs, the long sessions, the juggling of training with everything else in life, I expected all of that. What I did not expect was how closely it would echo everything else moving in my life at the same time.
From the outside, it looked like I was stepping forward with certainty: a new role at work, the end of a relationship, the decision to back myself in ways I had not before. On the inside, it felt far less clear.
Transitions, I have learned, do not feel like bold leaps. They feel messy. They feel like being suspended between who you were and who you are not yet.
The in-between can be brutal.
You lose the markers of stability you once relied on. What is left is ambiguity, self doubt, and the slow, uncomfortable work of piecing yourself together again.
On the trail, it shows up in small ways. Moving from runnable flats into a climb. Watching daylight fade before you are ready for the dark. Realising fatigue is asking you to shift your stride when you want to keep pushing.
At first, I resisted every change. I fought the transition. And all it did was drain me faster.
Real Talk | 01
Learning to soften
Eventually, I learned to soften. To let the terrain dictate the rhythm. To trust that if I adjusted, I would find a way through. And that lesson slowly made its way off the trail too.
Clarity does not come first. It comes after.
Real Talk | 02
What I wish I knew
What I wish I knew is that unravelling is not failure. That clarity does not come first, it comes after. That every ending carries the energy for a beginning, even if you cannot see it yet. That grit alone will not get you through: you need rest, softness and people alongside you.
The truth is, transitions do not feel like progress while you are in them. They feel slow and invisible. But when I look back, I can see that the unravelling was also the beginning.
The unravelling was also the beginning.
A Her Trails member, on what the trail taught her about transitions.
shared in her own words
Shared by a Her Trails member
Real Talk pieces are honest, first person accounts from women inside the Her Trails community. Shared with permission.
