Dear leader,

Stop needing to see where the path leads before you're willing to clear it.

There is a version of you that’s quietly decided that the order of your transition has to go a certain way. You’ll hand off the project once you know who’s covering it. You’ll speak with your manager once you have a full plan. You’ll let yourself picture your parental leave once the timeline is confirmed. You think you’re being careful. Or that you’re exhibiting good leadership or even being responsible.

But certainty was never yours to arrange. The transitions that matter most rarely wait for your plan to be finished first. If you keep holding your path hostage to having the next step figured out, you’ll be holding it forever. The next step usually only becomes clear after you make space for the transition, not before.

Last year, the system that ran Yogamazia was compromised without warning, and it took most of a year to transition into a new platform that I could trust. I did not get to pick the timing. What I have now is one system instead of multiple. Everything for both the business and the people we serve now lives in one place, and I stopped paying for tools that never spoke to each other.

Around that same season, I made the decision to sell the physical studio space that was built over 5 years. It was six months between deciding and the doors actually closing. Half a year of not knowing what my vision for the business would look like on the other side. Selling the physical space meant focusing on the women I was built to serve. The community of more than 700 women, children, families, and organizations built over those years was never the studio. It came with us.

Then after twenty months of waiting, The S.M.A.R.T. Journey to Parenting framework was finally registered as a trademark this year, and instead of that becoming the reason to have content to post about every day, it became the reason I stopped posting. I had been tired of performing visibility for a long time but now I could put those hours into other priorities and choose who actually gets my time.

None of these were clean decisions with the next plan already built. Each one meant living in a gap for months: running a business on a half-finished system, transitioning offerings from physical to virtual, stepping back from areas that diluted my focus. What held each one together was believing that staying true to my vision and showing up in fewer, truer places would be enough, before I had any proof that it would be.

This summer I had to clear out the room in my basement again. It became my working space when I sold the studio, but for years before that it was where we put things we did not know what else to do with. I cleared it out completely - every box, every toy, every leftover piece of furniture. It took me three weeks and I thought that was the end of it. Then sure enough, materials from the studio move found their way into my new ‘office’. For months, I had been working and watching the piles along the wall and like the first time, just woke up one day and started to clear it again.

All of this happening while my husband is moving through his own work transition, while my oldest daughter was searching for her first job after graduating college, while my middle daughter is preparing to start at a new school, and while my youngest is changing dance competition teams. Four different people, all moving through something unfinished, just like me. All of them mine to make room for.

Making space, it turns out, is not something you finish once. It’s moving without knowing where you’ll land. It’s not about having the next chapter written. It’s clearing what no longer belongs and being willing to sit in the empty space for a while.

So start moving by taking action:

1. Clear one thing this week. It could be something physical or something on your calendar. Resist the need to refill the space you made. Let it stay empty long enough to notice how uncomfortable it makes you, and know that’s ok.

2. Notice where you’re withholding a decision until you feel certain. Ask yourself honestly whether you’re waiting for clarity or gripping for control, because those are not the same thing.

3. Make time to grieve about what you're clearing out, even if the change was your idea. Making space usually means losing something you loved, and pretending otherwise is what makes it harder to sit in the gap.

You don't need the whole map. You just need to be willing to walk before you can see.

From my desk to yours,
Dr. Michelle El Khoury