In my work, I sit across from leaders and business owners navigating these questions every day: Should I stay the course or pivot? Is this resistance... or is it reality? Is this a difficult chapter... or the end of the story?

There are no universal recipes for solving these dilemmas, because the same external evidence can require opposite decisions depending on what is true underneath.

Imagine this: you are giving your best in all ways imaginable, and yet momentum is nowhere to be seen.

Do you cut your losses and let go - or do you push through, because the breakthrough may be just around the corner?

In some scenarios, the right call is to keep going. And in others - seemingly identical on the surface - the right call is to walk away.

Personal development teaches us that commitment and consistency get rewarded. We think that great leaders must persevere against all odds, so the case to keep going is strong.

But what if you are wasting your time on something that is simply not meant to be? Are you able to recognize that it is time to stop without feeling like you have given up?

And then there is also the psychological phenomenon of learned helplessness.

It arises after extended periods of trying to make something work - a business, a relationship, a project, a vision - but hitting roadblock after roadblock, with no wins in sight. After repeated experiences of failure or lack of control, you begin to assume that further action is pointless, even when circumstances have changed.

Eventually, your subconscious reaches a conclusion: this is not going to work. And so you stop trying, because you have accumulated enough evidence that effort produces no result.

However, in certain cases what appears to be a dead end is the final stretch before a shift. Sometimes, you have to endure ninety-nine “no”s before you get to one “yes”. And you only need one “yes” to change everything. Are you able to hold out for it?

The answers can only be accessed through discernment.

I have lived through both ends of the “give up vs keep going” spectrum just recently.

Last year, I stubbornly refused to let go of my old business, even though there were moments of startling clarity during which I knew I had to lay it all down. But I built my leadership style around the idea of devotion. I prided myself on showing up even through tough times (e.g. driving from my grandmother’s funeral straight to a training I was booked to lead). It took me months to untangle the situation and actually do what I knew I had to.

This year, I experienced a mirror version of this. Because I overstayed in my previous business, I almost deserted my new one way too soon, primed by last year’s disappointments. I had to sit with uncertainty and complexity in order to understand that right now, I am not clinging to something unaligned out of misguided loyalty. I am giving something that is true enough time to take root.

This is to say:

Reality gives us evidence. Discernment gives that evidence meaning.

And discernment arises through inquiry.

It requires you to ponder:

Does this still reflect who I am? Am I persevering because this still matters, or because I cannot bear to let it die? If I removed fear from the equation, what would feel true? What am I actually protecting? What am I afraid of losing?

Notice none of those questions are tactical - they are existential, and sitting with them shapes the backbone of your leadership.

Leadership is anchored in discernment more than it is in commitment or consistency. It requires the willingness to answer nuanced questions with clarity and courage - and to take responsibility for acting on the answers that emerge.

Leadership is being able to see reality clearly and stop arguing with it.

That is much harder to practice - and way more valuable - than “never give up.”

And yet I knew I needed to dismantle what I had built and start over. After 6 months of deconstruction, I came full circle. This is an honest account of how it happened and what it took.

In November 2025, I realized it was time to lay the old version of my business down. I finally admitted to myself that I needed a clean break from the online coaching industry, the Instagram personal brand culture, the never-ending cycle of content creation, and the near-monthly rhythm of launching.

At that time, I was promoting a group program that I thought was going to be my “signature”. It was about the power of positioning, and was called - and this is where the circle starts - Undeniable.

I was going through the motions of the launch, a well-oiled system that I knew well and relied on to bring the coveted 6-figure yearly income (or something in that vicinity).

I loved my work. I loved writing, teaching, speaking, developing frameworks. I was blessed with the best clients - smart, gifted, highly skilled women of integrity and wisdom.

But something felt off - and looking back, I admit it was off for quite a while.

The “off” feeling had two sides to it: the spiritual and the practical.

Spiritually, I was increasingly at odds with the main ontological tenets of the coaching industry and the personal development world at large. The “you create your own reality” narrative was in direct contradiction with my faith and my actual life experience. And the more I deepened my walk with God, the more removed I felt from the feminine leadership spaces that used to be my arena.

But the spiritual aspect of it is a discussion for another essay - in this one I want to focus on the purely practical, business strategy part of the story.

Running my own diagnostic methodology on myself revealed the crux of the matter:

I was falling out of love with the online coaching business because the 2025 architecture of the industry made me feel like I was turning into an unpaid content creator for Meta (just with zero benefits or vacation time).

The very things that grew my business and sustained it for years - deep dive carousels, stories, Instagram lives - were no longer working due to the algorithm changes I had no control over. I had strong client retention and proven results, but the business itself had stopped growing. My income plateaued as the coaching industry contracted and social media structures shifted underneath all of us.

Not surprisingly, my clients were confessing similar sentiments. The very platforms we poured years of consistency and creativity into did a complete “bait and switch” on us, not just changing the rules but redefining the entire game. Deep and gifted people who are not natural at producing bingeable, entertainment-adjacent content were getting left behind in the culture of reels and hooks. It felt maddening, unfair, and frightening at the same time.

The industry prescribes one solution to this: work on your visibility, improve your messaging. Messaging work became the holy grail of business coaching, with everyone and their cat (myself included) offering courses and workshops on how to articulate your value and make strangers on the internet notice you and pay you.

So everyone got busy tweaking CTAs, optimizing their words into oblivion and watching the joy of self-expression get replaced by the pain of condensing depth into short bites, and the humiliation of turning years of expertise into 90 seconds of entertainment.

And when that still did not work, the explanation was often psychological or energetic: limiting beliefs, scarcity mindset, fear of being seen.

This is part of the coaching industry’s unfalsifiable logic - structural and economic realities (e.g. recession, market contraction, wrong fit for someone’s cognitive wiring) are rarely acknowledged because the framework depends on locating the problem within the individual. If your business is struggling, the assumption is that your mindset, embodiment, or identity must need more work. Cue another course on “becoming that woman” - a concept so vague it is impossible to challenge or measure.

Meanwhile, very few people asked more fundamental questions:

What is all this messaging actually standing on? What is the strategy behind these tactical moves? What are we really building here? What is the endgame? Why are we collectively consenting to this new social media landscape?

I observed. I reflected. I even explored another solution - run ads, create funnels. I studied it but I could not bring myself to do it, because I felt repulsed by the entire thing. The ads and the funnels per se are not the core of issue. It was the underlying principle: play the game, bend to fit into someone else’s format, compress your complexity because it is unmarketable as is… It is the self-censoring, the translation, the erasure of everything that makes me who I am that enraged me.

I reached the last stop on the line.

This was the inflection point: fold and follow what the industry wants me to do to stay afloat, keep the lights on but secretly hate myself because I traded my integrity for survival? Or stay true to myself and burn it all down, come what may?

After wrestling with this choice for weeks, I saw clearly: this is not who I am, and this is not how I want to build. I’d rather have no business at all than do it this way.

I got off the hamster wheel of posting. I put self-expression on hold. No amount of good content, no amount of messaging tweaks, no amount of decorating the walls could compensate for the fact that the foundation of the house had shifted. And I had to tear it down and rebuild.

I handed it all over to God, and let Him work on me - and He did.

I want to tell you exactly what it felt like to be in the messy middle:

Scary. Overwhelming. Confusing.

And liberating at the same time.

For once, I was not beholden to any pre-defined notion of success. I was still working with some 1:1 clients and running my 7-month group container, but I released myself from the burden of showing up online and trying to look like a winner while I was in fact in the wilderness and grieving.

I poured myself into my real-life community, went to women’s Bible study weekly, and built friendships that were rooted in shared values. I realized that my desire to be seen online and all the subsequent song and dance of social media was only partially driven by the need to market my business - a big layer of it came from being undernourished and isolated in my daily life. Once that gap began to close, my motivation to maintain a personal-brand-style online presence dissolved.

I started asking long-term vision questions:

What am I building and why? How does God want to use me and my gifts? What value can I bring to the marketplace - true, timeless, independent of the algorithm changes and trends?

I spent hours in reflection and prayer. I journaled until my hand hurt. I brainstormed with AI. And no, I did not have a miraculous revelation about my purpose. I did not download some codes, the way the spiritual coaching industry paints it. I did not reverse engineer a profitable niche with prompts.

I was in God’s cauldron for months. And mind you, I did not plan for this. I did not have savings to live on or support from a partner. I had to walk through the void alone (while also navigating citizenship matters and geographic complexity, a story for another time). I had to lean on my Creator every step of the way - and even though my life during the wilderness chapter was far from lavish, I never found myself lacking.

It took me several rounds of burning and building and then burning again to land in a place that feels stable and clear.

I was humbled to discover that when it comes to birthing something that is as grounded as it is true, effort and determination alone are not enough.

A creation that is not just exciting but also well thought through requires time to gestate. Simply acting on whatever feels “aligned” is not always strategically sound and viable longterm. The common coaching industry advice to “launch/post what is alive in you” backfires when applied to building something that you want to last, because it leverages fleeting inspiration without establishing a strong foundation for it to rest on. So inspiration was not my priority, and patience became my best friend.

The main work I have done during these 6 months, unbeknownst to myself, was the work of positioning. Figuring out who I am at this stage of my life, and what my true and timeless expertise is - the kind of value that remains relevant regardless of industry shifts or personal reinvention.

A solid position is the foundation for a purposeful business and brand. It is the complete architecture of who you are, what you stand for, and what you offer. Your expertise, not your personality. Your undeniable edge, not just your lifestyle and vibes.

Trends change. Algorithms change. Your own personality and interests change.

What does not change is the depth of what you actually know, the specificity of how you see, and the precision of what you stand for.

A brand built on that is not vulnerable to any of those shifts.

So this is how I am building UNDENIABLE - my strategic leadership advisory.

With this company name, I have gone full circle. I am back so close to where I started - Undeniable the group program back in November 2025.

Through months of creating and dissolving, constructing and shedding, I managed to let go of many illusions. I am no longer making grand declarations about this being my Soul path or destiny…. I am well past the era of romanticizing my work and making it the sole load-bearing pillar of my fulfillment.

I am looking at UNDENIABLE with sober, strategically attuned eyes. But I am looking at it with a peaceful heart, because it is built on rock, not sand.

If you have read all the way until the end, I salute you.

And if you recognize yourself in my story, I would love to hear from you.

What did you have to dismantle in order to build something new?

That’s because I have been busy building a new business, a strategic leadership advisory called UNDENIABLE.

In the process, I found myself revisiting some fundamental questions about my work, my writing, and what all of it is really about. At one point, I became convinced that I needed a separate publication for these new ideas and launched a second Substack to match the new business name.

As it turns out, I made things unnecessarily complicated for myself - because there is no separation between Violetta the writer and Violetta the advisor.

No matter what I write about - grief or business, faith or leadership - I am exploring the same core themes from different angles.

The red thread of my life and writing and work wraps itself around the same narrative - the questions of purpose, identity, faith, success, and what it means to build something true in a world obsessed with performance.

So I have decided to bring everything back under one roof. The new Substack I have not even properly used has been dissolved, and this publication is getting renamed.

Going forward, it will be called UNDENIABLE by Violetta.

Nothing changes for you as a subscriber. If anything, the publication has become more fully itself. You can continue to expect essays that blend personal reflection, cultural critique, leadership insights, business thinking, and the occasional uncomfortable question that refuses to leave me alone.

As for This Side of Eternity - it remains one of my favorite phrases I have ever come up with. It captures something important about how I see the world. But for now, it is retiring as the name of the publication. Perhaps one day it will return as the title of a book.

Thank you for being here, especially those of you who joined in the early days when this was little more than an experiment and a way to process one of the most challenging chapters of my life.

I am grateful for your attention, your encouragement, and your willingness to think deeply alongside me.

More soon.

Violetta

We have been conditioned to mine our own lives for content, ranging from something as innocuous as posting a cute picture of a pet to much deeper revelations about our inner lives.

And somehow, these personal-gone-public shares tend to follow a formula that is vaguely reminiscent of “the hero’s journey”: a struggle turned into a triumph and used as a testament to whatever the person happens to be selling; a miracle that is presented as if it was self-sourced; a pivot that gets edited to look more polished and deliberate than it actually was.

As a personal brand, you are encouraged (expected even) to share the intimate workings of your life. But somehow, there is an undertone to it, an unspoken demand for that sharing to come with a lesson learned, a teachable moment, an inspirational angle that is supposed to uplift the reader and solidify your positioning as “the hero” all in the same breath.

The subliminal message that the internet is sending can be summed up as: sure, go ahead and tell us about your struggles but only if they lead to victory and comfort us instead of rattling the status quo. Also known as “good vibes only” - it works better for the algorithms.

Life’s inevitable paradoxes are too taxing to process when scrolling. Intricate narratives and stories that come with caveats do not fit into social media formats. Nobody has time for nuance; everyone just wants to win (and do it fast).

Obviously, truth is far more multidimensional than any of this.

Vulnerability does not always come with a redemption arc. And hard chapters do not always turn into teachable moments.

Truth is a rocky road. Sometimes you walk it, and sometimes you crawl forward, held up by nothing but willpower and faith. It is a non-linear path that does not necessarily result in a celebration or even a semblance of clarity.

That’s why I believe it is wiser and kinder to keep some of our vulnerabilities private. Because sharing them in all their complexity is a violation of the self, and editing them for public consumption is a distortion of truth.

That’s why I am choosing not to elaborate on what I have been going through these past months - while refusing to underplay that they have been among the hardest of my life.

Me stating this matters. It is not for pity or understanding or support - I am good on that front. And it is definitely not for extracting some kind of wisdom from it, because none of it is remotely close to being ripe.

Why this needs to be stated is deeper: it is for accurate accounting.

Because walking through the world without naming the weight of what I am carrying and the impact it has on me feels dangerously close to self-betrayal.

So here goes: I am carrying a lot. It does not matter what it is. I am handling it. And as I do it, I need to voice the mere fact of it being in my life.

Heartbreak does not need to be explained; it simply wants to not be denied.

Unlike other losses, these are neither clean nor final. They drag on, suspend you between despair and hope, and gradually crush you under the weight of uncertainty - unless a special form of clarity arrives that puts an end to the ambivalence and makes the choice for you.

This form of clarity has a name: cruel clarity.

It comes to liberate you - but costs you dearly.

Cruel clarity feels like a hailstorm that arrives in April, unexpected and unwelcome. It looks like a setback in what seemed to be true spring because of how harshly it lands on the new, still delicate leaves. You do not want it, but you have to endure it, for it will pass - and when it does, the world will be brighter for it.

Cruel clarity tastes like bitter medicine you need to swallow in order to save your life. You know it will be awful but realize that over time, it will begin to heal you. It is just a matter of closing your eyes, taking it, cringing, maybe even screaming… and then letting it do its job.

Cruel clarity is akin to a morning after a funeral. It brings finality, it cannot be bargained with. It closes the door, and in doing so, it resets the cycle of life. And maybe eventually, something new gets to emerge from it.

Cruel clarity is what dawns when you have to override something real for the sake of something true - ending a relationship that has no future with no one at fault but fate; walking away from a career you once loved that now feels stale; foregoing an opportunity that held promise but demanded compromise.

This is not the kind, soft, golden glow type of clarity from the motivational quotes about “choosing your highest timeline” or “releasing what no longer serves you”.

This is not acceptance, and this is not peace. A bucket of ice-cold water instead of a warm bath. It does not exist to comfort you - it arrives to wake you up.

This form of clarity is cruel because it breaks your heart while simultaneously setting you free.

And it is clarity still, because its presence dissolves the fog that was concocted by false hope, lingering love, clever reasoning, and purely human refusal to let go. It is stark and it is flat, utterly undecorated and raw.

Dealing with cruel clarity can make you angry and even cynical. It exposes the underbelly of transformation and reveals the real cost of growth. That underbelly is not Instagram pretty. That cost is so high it may leave you in debt.

But if it is so absolute and so unrelenting, why does this clarity even exist?

It exists because some layers of human experience do not get moved by anything softer. Some attachments need to be severed, not gently untangled. Some doors need to be shut and sealed, not just closed. Some bridges need to be burned after they get crossed.

Why? So that new life can arise.

So that reality can rearrange itself after a reckoning, and true things can find their way back to you no matter what.

The way flowers bloom after a blaze.

The way a pruned branch bears more fruit.

The proclamations are grandiose, the urgency is palpable - go bigger, try harder, be more, NOW.

I used to encounter these decrees on the daily, as an active participant of the online coaching industry since its very inception. Did I subscribe to them? Not really. Did I witness a subtle cultural shift brought about by them? Most definitely.

As the coaching industry matured and self-help reached the point of ubiquity, we collectively consented to one dominant narrative of success, as it was presented (or shall I say - sold) to us by an assortment of personal development gurus, coaches, and “thought leaders”.

This narrative is centered around aspiring to MORE - earning more, impacting more, wanting more. Success requires never-ending growth, and hinges upon your ability to take what you want from life. Own, claim, manifest, achieve, scale - all of this is conquest language that instructs you to extract from the world, which inevitably includes extracting from yourself and other people.

This energetic stance is fundamentally aggressive, not receptive. There is no room for receiving, for allowing, for being given something beyond what you can manufacture. You are positioned as the source, not the vessel.

And if you push back and tell your business mentor of the season that you, in fact, do not want to double your launch goals, and that you actually have no interest in plastering your face all over the internet under the guise of being a personal brand, and that you actually want your peace and your “small” 5k target income more than you want 50k months that everyone else seems to be after - they will most likely tell you that: a) you are self-sabotaging, and b) the feminine is driven by desire and always wants more, so you not desiring more means you are blocked and need to sign up for XYZ immediately.

I call this “the tyranny of dreaming big” - the imperative of chasing success at all costs and being deemed a heretic should you decide to exit the race.

What makes it tyrannical is not just that the dreams are externally defined - it is that you are forbidden from wanting anything different. Small is failure. Quiet and slow is resistance. The only acceptable dream is MORE, and if you do not want MORE, you are broken and need fixing.

The logic of dreaming big is infallible because it is circular: if you succeed, you did it the right way (and are henceforth authorized to sell your “blueprint” to less fortunate self-help acolytes); if you fail, you did not try hard enough. Either way, the framework wins and you lose - trapped in either grandiosity or shame, with no room for mystery, God’s timing, grace, or the very real possibility that some dreams are simply not meant to come true.

Sure, your desires are valid and can be unstoppable forces of momentum and change. Where it gets problematic is the moment inspiration turns into prescription, and when a genuine quest for improving your circumstances begets entitlement to your wishes being granted.

The issue with the glorification of big dreams is that it has blurred the lines between God-given calling and ego inflation. If you question whether a desire is truly yours - or whether it is borrowed ambition, wound-driven performance, or the marketplace messing with your discernment - you are told you are “sabotaging” or “in lack mindset”. Every want is seen as sacred, every ambition treated as valid.

But if you question nothing and proceed to claim everything, you are just one step away from knocking God off the pedestal, placing yourself on it, and calling the resulting distortion “feminine power” (or some such thing, whatever fits the brand voice trending at the moment).

Questioning the big dreams discourse is exactly what I have been doing behind the scenes for years - privately, carefully, while still operating within the industry that glorified it. I knew something was off. I could see the distortion. But I had not yet given myself permission to fully walk away from what everyone around me insisted I should want.

As an overachiever with a track record of winning scholarships, graduating top of my class, becoming the youngest Lead Trainer at an international coaching school, and then building my own coaching brand from zero to 6 figures, I am no stranger to the temptations of worldly success. However, there has always been a misalignment between what I actually wanted (deep work, but slow, soft, and a very private life) and what the industry insisted I should dream about (visibility, scale, empire-building). The tension was constant: my accomplishments were real, but they came at the cost of suppressing what I knew to be true about how I am wired.

In 2025, I turned 40 - a milestone that made me look back at my 20s and 30s with a critical eye. Evaluating everything I have seemingly achieved, I was shocked by the absence of what I truly wanted. I am still grieving the fact that despite having a successful business and “living my purpose”, my biggest and most precious dream - a covenant marriage with the right man - has not yet come true, no matter how hard I tried to make it happen.

The coaching industry is all too happy to sell me an assortment of modalities and programs to help me heal harder, claim better, manifest faster. I confess to having spent an inordinate amount of money on all possible versions of it, only to discover that I have actually done the work, and I am not, in fact, blocked or cursed or broken in some way.

This is where the tyranny of dreaming big reveals its cruelty: it traps you in endless self-improvement and performance - all to prove you that deserve what you want. However, proving does not automatically beget having.

The juxtaposition of my success and my unfulfilled longing confirms to me that not everything in this world is ours for the taking, and to presume otherwise is naive at best and arrogant at worst. The only discovery that brought me real peace is that not every dream is within our control. To force things into existence that are God’s territory is simply foolish.

I am left wondering:

What if dreams should not be categorized as big or small, but rather as true and untrue?

What if it is not even up to us to set goals and produce intentions? What if we could just lean back into our design as vessels for something greater, and let God fill us with His plans for us?

What if there is nothing to prove, achieve, and perform, beyond staying connected with the beating heart of who we are, doing what is ours to do and releasing the rest?

This is the alternative to the tyranny of dreaming big: trusting that God’s plans for you are already good, already sufficient, already tailored to who you actually are - not who the world insists you should become.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” - Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

Trusting God with your dreams is not a shortcut to getting them fulfilled. It is something so much deeper: a doorway into peace. The kind of peace that comes from knowing that you do not need to claim, manifest, scale or hustle your way into His favor. You are already seen, already known, already held. And what is meant for you will not miss you, even if it takes time to arrive. So you can rest easy, leaning back into the embrace of something far greater than you.

The freedom is not in dreaming bigger. The freedom is in dreaming true.

On the one hand side, I am yearning to teach on subjects that God has placed upon my heart. Words flow effortlessly when I write notes for future transmissions. It feels like an anointing - as opposed to ambition or obligation. I could literally start tomorrow, talk for hours and not tire.

On the other hand side, I am tensing up at the thought of “launching” this teaching. Something pure, embodied, deeply personal and alive needs to be presented to the world under the guise of an offer. Or worse, a “container” of some kind. The living stream of wisdom has to be reduced to results, outcomes, benefits.

And the irony is: I used to LOVE this part. I was so good at it that I even taught it to others.

But now it feels like a performance that I existentially resist and morally oppose - because at the core of it lies the premise of having to explain myself to the world, to prove that I am indeed worthy of your attention, trust, and high regard (as expressed by money paid for my intellectual and emotional labor).

The entire setup feels like a circus I no longer desire to participate in.

What changed?

Firstly and most obviously - myself.

Over the past year or so, I have deepened my walk with God to the point of Him rewiring my entire personality. I look at myself in the mirror, not recognizing what I see: where is the high achiever, the top performer, the ambitious leader? She dissolved, because her wounds - those of a parentified child wired to seek love through making herself useful and performing for praise - got healed by abiding in God’s infinite love. She finally realized that she does not need to be anyone or accomplish anything in order to be loved, held, and provided for. Naturally, all the external structures that hosted that old way of being started to collapse. And what is left is space and pure desire to use my gifts for God’s work in this world.

The constructs of business and brand feel like heavy winter clothes I cannot wait to shed. I want to work, I want to serve - but the frame is changing at the root level, and I am busy finding new language for it.

Secondly and undeniably - the coaching industry itself has shape-shifted.

We are collectively getting bored of the online marketing song&dance. The moves are no longer registering - we have learned to just scroll past them. Those of us who are service providers in the personal development realm have become so good at promoting ourselves (be that by natural inclination or by necessity) that we are now hitting the so-called mastery paradox. This term refers to the phenomenon of being so good at a skill that it starts to feel mechanical, repetitive, and perfunctory to the point of becoming soulless.

I confess: I am living this mastery paradox right now. Everything that used to evoke my creativity and tickle my strategic thinking - tasks like messaging, positioning, content writing, launch planning - now feels stale. I could launch a new group program in my sleep, but it is because the moves of launching are so familiar to me that I resist the very thought of executing them.

Not only do I refuse to partake in a performance devoid of any true meaning - I also notice that the marketing skill itself became tainted by the knowledge of how it is deployed by the industry at large. Maybe I am too conscientious for my own good, but I refuse to add to the noise. Business coaches seem to be oblivious to the industry’s evolution; their response is to advise you to “stand out in a crowded marketplace” by throwing money at ads and funnels. And if you dare raise any concern around the ubiquity and redundancy of the tactics suggested, they gaslight you with their habitual nonchalance and proceed to have a 5-figure day at your expense, thus cementing the perception of their own success.

So I am left with a question:

In a world where transformational work is as relevant as it has ever been, how are we to offer it in a way that does not require us to commodify our gifts and go against our values on the daily?

I believe I am not alone in my rage against the online marketing machine - and in my burning desire to find and embody a new way. I have been having this conversation with dozens of clients and peers over the years, so, it is more than a subjective plight of a neurodivergent woman who has been coaching for 15 years and grew weary. The tiredness, the staleness, the exhaustion from “business as usual” is symptomatic of coaching market sophistication and saturation. Personally, I do not see it as a sign to give up. I see it as an invitation to innovate.

Some of us will hang up our online business hats and find something else to do with our time and talents (side note - nothing wrong with getting a “normal” job; I am genuinely supportive of clients and peers who did so).

Yet some of us will be forced to dig deep enough, and find the clarity on how to proceed and the courage to do things differently. Nothing will change if we continue participating in business and marketing practices that we have grown to resent.

My prediction for the coaching industry is that we will go back to the basics, the way things were 10-15 years ago, when it was all new and fresh and a little bit idealistic.

Sincere desire to help people as the main driver (instead of lifestyle, influence and money). Authentic sharing as the way to promote your work (instead of multi-step curated strategies and convoluted social media tactics). Un-branding ourselves. De-positioning our expertise. Serving instead of proving. Isn’t this why we chose this career path in the first place?

This process - from branding to being, from leading to listening, from ambition to anointment, from wound-powered performer to daughter of God who has nothing to prove but so much to give - IS in fact the teaching that I intend to share with the world.

To position it as a “program” would defy its very purpose, to promote it in the conventional way would be to betray its essence.

So, watch me do things differently for once. I shall lay the new path by walking it.

And even though I feel lost, confused, and overwhelmed at times, I am not miserable - for I am a depth dweller in my essence, a mystic at my core. I am not the one who needs to assess reality through the lens of clear-cut categories. I am not the one to petition God daily for clarity and answers and a plan. I was born seeking the in-between; I was raised loving the rain. The void is my place of comfort, the wilderness is what brings me solace, the cave is where I find peace.

Many won’t understand, and I have come to accept it because being unknowable, uncategorizable, and unrelatable is my default mode since childhood.

People say: But you can’t stay in this wild unknown forever, you must make a plan. They keep asking me - What is next? What do you intend to do? What about this or that?

And my honest answer is: I don’t know.

Because to say anything else is to offend my Creator, Him who placed me in this initiatory chamber for reasons I am currently not privy to. To wrestle with God is human; to presume I know better than Him would be prideful.

I understand that most people need a plan to make it through the day, let alone through hard seasons. For them, control is like oxygen; certainty is like daily bread.

This is a valid approach, but it is not mine. I cannot come up with a plan until God shows me the way.

Some would call this avoidance. I call it surrender.

This is where God-seeking, mystical Souls differ from the rest of the world - we actually feel at home in liminal spaces. To us, uncertainty is far from being torment - it is illumination. Through braving uncharted waters, we become the compass. Through staying with life’s most staggering questions, we become the living answers. We are forever suspended between this realm and the unseen one - living in this world but not of it, indeed.

We are rain lovers in the culture that is obsessed with chasing sunshine.

We are depth dwellers in the society that is content with swimming in shallow waters.

Oftentimes, this turns us into outcasts.

And yet, this innate ability to thrive in threshold states is what endows us with wisdom and positions us as prophetic voices that are misunderstood yet sought out.

We know that transitions are messy by definition.

They don’t follow linear tracks. They unfold in spirals, rather, and take us deeper with each new layer. They unravel us at an unpredictable pace until the very core of us gets exposed, and then, rediscovered and reshaped.

One step forward, two steps back.

Three steps forward, and then standing still.

Such is the law of transformation - it is uncontrollable.

That’s why being in transition can be terrifying. The unpredictability of it, the chaos, the vulnerability - that’s a lot for humans to bear.

But as we surrender to the indiscernible logic of it, acceptance starts to dawn. Patterns become visible. Slowly, solutions present themselves. The labyrinthine road through the dark woods eventually leads to a clearing.

We arrive there humbled by the arduous journey, our hearts softened and strengthened in equal measure by the trials we had to face.

What becomes obvious then is that the process was the destination, and the experience of transition itself was the blessing. We no longer take the clearing for granted. We no longer believe that we are entitled to a safe or easy passage. We learn to value the respite, and to respect every step that led to it.

We shape-shift into our next selves not by decision or by command - we do it by yielding to the undercurrent of something far greater than us, something that defies human preferences and plans, something that knows what our Souls truly need.

In the wilderness, we are never lost or abandoned.

In the waiting, we are sanctified.

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In August 2021, I returned from my father’s funeral, went upstairs to my room in the house he built, opened my laptop, started a document which I called “Loving the Rain”, and began to turn the intensity of my grief into the immanence of language.

Words offered me a lifeline, and not for the first time.

I was a writer before I became anything else, processing reality in my journals as a teenager, typing up entire novels as a young adult. And then, my eloquence got trapped in social media captions and promotional copy, all in the name of making my coaching business succeed (which it did).

After 15 years of using my voice in the field of personal development and transformation, I am redirecting it towards the things that matter most, things that God placed into my heart early on.

Faith, family, love, loss, meaning, calling, belonging, impermanence…

I have always been prone to asking big questions - the kind that arrive unannounced and crack us wide open. Who am I when all my known identities dissolve? What does love look like after heartbreak? What remains when I walk away from everything I’ve built and thought I wanted?

This side of eternity, we don’t always get the answers - but I have come to believe that we find God through staying with the questions. In fact, if we are willing to stare the unknown in the face for long enough, we get to become the living answers to the dilemmas that haunt us.

Back to my father’s funeral. A couple of days after it took place, I went back to his grave and made a promise in his honor.

I vowed that I would write a book.

One day, “Loving the Rain” will become that book.

But for now, “This Side of Eternity” is the space where I get to prepare for it. Some of the essays I will be posting here will form that upcoming memoir; others will be standalone pieces and reflections.

On social media, my depth remained unsolicited. Here, it will be unleashed.

My writing here will be different from how some of you have experienced it elsewhere. More somber, serious, and definitely more poetic.

I want it to slap and soothe at the same time.

I want it to feel like a gloomy day that makes you turn inwards and discover layers of truth you have not touched before.

I want it to be honest.

I want it to transmit the complexity of human existence in a way that makes you love it like you would love rain.

I want it to make this side of eternity feel a bit more like home.

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