There comes a time in our lives when we find ourselves in a weird empty space.

When the old structures, ideas, beliefs, relationships and even your own identity don’t make sense.

Maybe you are going through something that has left you broken, lost, or confused. You find yourself grappling with questions around identity, meaning, and purpose. Who you were or what your life was or has been doesn’t make sense anymore and you haven’t really found a new you yet.

This middle where there is chaos and confusion is the void. This an empty, lonely place—quiet yet filled with echoes of what was, what could have been, and what can be.

It’s an excruciatingly difficult place to be in—this void. You’re just stuck. You can’t move back because there is nothing in your past that calls out to you…it’s broken and has lost meaning.

The future is nowhere in sight and you’re just hanging there, in the middle, in this void—a deep, dark, empty space filled with nothing. And as scary as it is, it’s necessary. Think of it like downtime for your mind and body where you’re forced to enter into a space of recalibration.

This is a space of awareness and choice (if you wish to exercise that). You can either let this empty ball of nothingness consume you and spit you out wherever it pleases, or you can learn to navigate it slowly, one day, one step at a time, and start to find a direction for yourself to move into.

Is that going to be easy? No. Sitting with your worst fears, deepest emotions, and uncertainties is daunting. It’s like your soul is being ripped apart every waking minute and you’d rather sleep it off to avoid facing everything that’s going inside of you. But then it’s also preparation for what can be your new reality—whatever you want to choose for yourself.

You can replay the same stories and patterns, not do anything, or weave a new story for yourself. It’s not about whether it’s going to happen or not. It’s about how you want to move ahead from this point in time. It’s about taking ownership and responsibility for the choices you made, grieving what could have been but wasn’t. It’s about facing the mirror and acknowledging the multitude of emotions that you feel within—the guilt, anger, rage, sadness, frustration, helplessness, and so much more, and then it’s about asking yourself: What do I want to do with all this? What do I want my new reality to look like?

And no. You won’t get the answer instantly. Not until you’ve worked through the layers of your experience and arrived at an image or understanding of a new version of you that you would like to move toward. It will take time. It will test your patience. You will want to be in your comfort zone and move out at the same time. Your mind will keep circling back to the old and familiar yet there will be another part of you that will stop you from falling back in. This void is made up of a weird push-pull that makes sense but also doesn’t. Funny place, this void.

While navigating it is going to be difficult, this is what this void is actually asking you to do:

1. Learn to sit with and honor your emotions instead of running away from them or hiding behind comfort watching and doom scrolling. You have to lean into the discomfort, speak to it, understand it, bear it, and let it move through you.

2. Process the past—what happened and why. What could you have done differently? How did you not honor yourself, your relationships, your life?

3. Let go of what’s hurting no matter how attached you’ve been with it.

4. Reconnect with the lost parts of you—the ones that got lost behind in the chasing, pleasing, achieving, and doing.

5. Set a new intention of how you’d like your life to be from this point onwards. Define what’s next.

You can allow this void to shape you into the next version of you who is aware, empowered, and evolved.

Take this time as a chance to start afresh because nothing new can be built on old foundations—and the old foundation was weak and unstable anyway and had to crumble. Yes. You have to allow it to fall for something new to emerge even if it’s your own identity because there is a new, better version waiting for you to show up and claim it.

Everything in life demands an upgrade. You do too, if you’re willing to take that route.

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