The Messy Middle: Why Grace Matters More Than Your Perfect Plan

Life has a way of showing up uninvited, doesn't it?

You've got your morning routine dialed in. Your supplements organized. Maybe you've finally cracked the code on eating in a way that works for your brain and body. And then—boom—something happens that wasn't on your carefully crafted wellness calendar.

A family crisis. A relationship rupture. A health diagnosis. A loss that levels you. Suddenly, all those good intentions feel impossible, and you're left wondering why you can't just "stay on track."

Here's what I want you to know: You're not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do.

When Your Mind Resists What Your Body Already Knows

I've been sitting with some big, overwhelming feelings lately—the kind that make you feel more than you're used to feeling, with an intensity that catches you off guard. And I've watched my mind do its thing: resist, judge, create stories about why change is dangerous and why I should somehow be different than I am.

But here's the fascinating part: while my mind spins these protective stories, my body already knows how to navigate change. It knows how to be present. It knows how to work with reality, even when reality is uncomfortable.

Your body—your nervous system, your cells, your rhythms—has been adapting to change since before you were born. It's your mind that gets caught up in beliefs that create suffering:

I should be handling this better.Something's wrong with me for struggling.I'm falling behind.This means I'm not a healthy person.

These thoughts? They're not truth. They're protective mechanisms your brain developed to keep you safe. And during times of stress—especially for those of us navigating the metabolic and hormonal shifts of midlife—these protective patterns can kick into overdrive.

There Is No "On Track"

Let's talk about what we really mean when we say someone is "healthy."

Is it the woman who eats perfectly but carries chronic stress that's destroying her gut lining? Is it the person who exercises religiously but ignores the screaming signals from their body to rest? Is it someone who checks all the wellness boxes on the outside while quietly falling apart on the inside?

True health is not a destination you arrive at or a perfect protocol you follow without deviation. True health is how well you can navigate the messy middle—the space between where you were and where you're becoming.

It's not about avoiding disruption. Life will disrupt you. It's about how you meet yourself in that disruption.

The Expansion You Didn't Ask For

Big life events—the hard ones, the ones that make you feel too much—these are often portals to expansion. Not because difficulty is inherently good or because you should be grateful for pain. But because when life cracks you open, you have a choice about what you investigate in that opening.

You can investigate those beliefs that are making the difficulty feel unbearable:

• Endings are failures

• The past should have been different

• Discomfort means I'm doing it wrong

• I should be stronger/better/different

Or you can get curious.

You can ask:

What if this intensity I'm feeling is my system processing something real?

What if these big feelings are actually data, not defects?

This is where grace comes in—not the Instagram version of grace that looks like lavender baths and positive affirmations, but the real, gritty kind that says: "I'm in an expansion I didn't ask for, and I'm going to be kind to myself while I move through it."

What Sustainable Health Actually Looks Like

The women I work with often come to me believing there's some perfect formula they're missing—some combination of supplements, habits, and willpower that will make everything click into place.

But sustainable health doesn't live in perfection. It lives in your ability to:

• Recognize when you're in overwhelm and adjust accordingly, rather than powering through

• Notice the stories your brain tells you during stress without believing all of them

• Honor what your body needs right now, even if it's different from what you planned

• Give yourself permission to be messy, to struggle, to feel big feelings without making them mean you've failed

• Return to practices that support you without shame about how long you've been away

There is no one-size-fits-all path because there is no one-size-fits-all life.

Your challenges are unique. Your brain chemistry is unique. Your history, your resources, your current capacity—all unique.

The goal isn't to transcend your humanity. It's to work with your very human nervous system, with compassion, as you navigate whatever life is handing you right now.

If You're in an Expansion Process

Maybe you're reading this and recognizing yourself—feeling more than you're used to feeling, navigating changes you didn't ask for, wondering how to maintain any semblance of health when everything feels hard.

First: What you're experiencing is real, and it matters. Your brain isn't malfunctioning because it's resisting change or generating uncomfortable feelings. It's trying to protect you with the tools it has.

Second: The messy middle you're in? That's not evidence of failure. That's where the actual transformation happens. Joy often lives on the other side of expansion, even though expansion itself can feel intense and uncomfortable.

Third: This is your invitation to investigate—not to fix yourself, but to understand yourself.

To get curious about the beliefs that are creating extra suffering on top of an already difficult situation. To ask what might be possible if you brought more grace and less judgment to this process.

Who You're Becoming Matters More Than What You're Doing

Here's where most of us get tripped up with our health goals: We focus on the tasks. Lose 15 pounds. Exercise five days a week. Meditate every morning. Drink more water. Hit our macros.

And then life happens—the difficult, messy, unpredictable parts—and suddenly those tasks feel impossible. So we feel like failures. We tell ourselves we'll start again on Monday, after the crisis passes, when things calm down.

But what if you let go of the checklist and asked yourself: who do I want to become?

What if your intention was to become more resilient—not in the "grit your teeth and power through" way, but in the "I can bend without breaking" way? Or more empowered—learning to trust your own signals instead of outsourcing your decisions to experts or perfectionist rules? Or more accountable to yourself—showing up for your needs even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable?

This isn't just semantic wordplay. It's a fundamental shift in how you approach your health.

Because no matter what life throws at you in this moment—the sleepless nights, the relationship conflict, the work crisis, the grief—you can still support yourself in becoming the person you want to become. You might not hit your workout schedule, but you can practice resilience by asking for help. You might not meal prep perfectly, but you can practice accountability by noticing when you're using food to numb difficult feelings.

The messy middle is where wisdom lives, if you're willing to look for it.

When you're navigating difficulty and you choose curiosity over judgment? That's building resilience. When you honor your body's need for rest instead of pushing through because you "should"? That's practicing empowerment. When you notice you're struggling and reach out for support instead of isolating? That's accountability to your wellbeing.

These qualities—resilience, empowerment, determination, self-trust—aren't separate from your health goals. They are the foundation that makes sustainable health possible. Because when you cultivate these ways of being, the path to whatever health goals you have becomes clearer. Not easier, necessarily. But clearer.

You stop waiting for perfect conditions to take care of yourself. You stop using life's chaos as evidence that you're not capable of change. You start recognizing that every single day—even the hard ones, especially the hard ones—offers opportunities to practice becoming the person you want to be.

And that person? She doesn't need everything to go right to prioritize her health. She doesn't need to wait until she feels better to start showing up for herself.

She knows that transformation isn't linear, that growth happens in the spaces between where we were and where we're going, and that the messy middle is exactly where she needs to be.

The Practice of Grace

Grace isn't about lowering your standards or giving up on your health. It's about understanding that health is something you practice in the context of real life—with all its complexity, unpredictability, and occasional chaos.

It's remembering that your body knows how to be in the present moment, even when your mind is spinning stories about the past or worrying about the future.

It's trusting that you can hold both things at once: the reality of difficulty and the reality that you're doing your best with what you have right now.

I recently told a client who was struggling with a sense of failure in her health goals:

"There's always another chance, Emma. It's not failure. It's information you are using to refine your vision and methods. There's success in that."

It's knowing that the path forward isn't about getting back to some idealized version of yourself. It's about showing up for the person you are today, in whatever state you're in, with as much kindness as you can muster.

Because here's the truth: The version of health that requires everything to go according to plan isn't sustainable. The version that can hold space for difficulty, grief, change, and growth? That's the one that will carry you through the long haul.

If you're navigating difficult changes and struggling to maintain your health practices with grace instead of judgment, that's exactly what I help women do—especially during the brain-chemistry shifts of midlife. You don't have to figure this out alone.

Join Me. 1:1 Coaching

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