There’s a phrase that’s been sitting with me lately:

The messy middle.

And honestly?

Sometimes I feel like my whole life is one long messy middle.

Not in a dramatic, everything-is-falling-apart kind of way.

But in the deeply human way.

A weave of emotions.
A weave of thoughts.
A weave of certainty and uncertainty.
Knowing… and not knowing.
Trusting… and wobbling.
Feeling grounded one moment and completely off-center the next.

That, to me, is the messy middle.

And maybe what I’m realizing is this:

The messy middle isn’t a detour from life.
It is life.

The problem is, when I’m not grounded, I don’t experience it that way.

When I’m not grounded, the messy middle feels like danger.

It feels like:
Something is wrong.
I did something wrong.
I’m not enough.
I should know what to do by now.
I need to fix this.
Immediately.

My body contracts.

I literally hold my breath.

My chest tightens.

My nervous system goes on alert like an over-caffeinated intern yelling, “WE HAVE A SITUATION.”

And suddenly, I’m not responding to what’s actually happening.

I’m responding to what my body thinks it means.

That’s the thing about the messy middle.

It’s rarely the circumstance itself.

It’s the meaning we assign to the circumstance.

Take yesterday.

My youngest daughter—home from college for the summer—came to me on a beautiful day and asked if she could borrow my Jeep and take the kayaks to the reservoir.

Simple enough.

Normal request.

Totally reasonable.

And yet…

I felt irritation rise almost instantly.

My heart sped up.

That subtle internal pressure switch flipped.

And my immediate internal response was:

I have to figure this out.

I have to make this happen.
I have to solve it.
I have to manage it.

And the fascinating part?

She wasn’t asking me to solve anything.

She wasn’t handing me a crisis.

She was asking a simple question.

But my nervous system interpreted the request as pressure.

And that’s where the grounded version of me stepped in.

Not harshly.

Not critically.

But like a wise big sister pulling up a chair and saying:

“Whoa. What’s actually happening here?”

And that question changed everything.

Because the Jeep wasn’t really the issue.

Sure, maybe a tiny part of me was imagining kayaks scraping up my vehicle.

Fair.

But deeper than that?

It was an old pattern.

Someone needs something.
I must make it happen.
I must manage the experience.
I must solve.

That’s not reality.

That’s conditioning.

That’s old wiring.

That’s ungrounded me trying to create safety through control.

And here’s what grounded me knows that scared me forgets:

The messy middle is not the definition of my life.

It’s a moment.

A blip.

An experience.

Not an identity.

Grounded me knows:

The feelings will pass.
The conversation will pass.
The decision will pass.
The uncertainty will pass.

Grounded me knows that even when something feels messy, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Sometimes messy just means life is moving.

Sometimes messy means growth.

As a runner, this makes sense to me.

After a hard training run, my body hurts.

My muscles ache.

I’m sore.

But soreness doesn’t automatically mean damage.

Sometimes soreness means adaptation.

Training.

Expansion.

Strength being built.

Maybe the messy middle is like that too.

Not a sign that something is broken.

A sign that something is being built.

And maybe that’s why I want to say this to you, if you’re in your own messy middle right now:

Go easier on yourself.

Please.

Life is hard enough without us becoming our own harshest critic.

Slow it down.

Get curious.

Ask yourself better questions.

Not:
What’s wrong with me?

But:
What’s coming up here?

Not:
Why can’t I get it together?

But:
What story am I telling myself right now?

Not:
How do I make this stop?

But:
What do I actually need?

Because the truth is, so much of the certainty we desperately search for outside ourselves… already lives within us.

You are worthy of slowing down enough to hear yourself.

You are worthy of your own curiosity.

You are worthy of your own compassion.

And maybe most importantly?

You are worthy of getting to know.

Because here’s what I’m learning:

The goal isn’t to eliminate the messy middle.

The goal is to stop making it mean you’re failing.

The goal is to trust yourself inside it.

To breathe inside it.

To soften inside it.

To remember who you are inside it.

Because yes—life will continue to be full of intersections, uncertainties, unexpected turns, beautiful chaos, grief, joy, growth, and moments that stretch you.

That’s not failure.

That’s being alive.

And if you’re in a messy middle today?

Take a breath.

Then another.

And instead of rushing to fix yourself…

Sit with yourself.

Listen.

Get curious.

Because maybe the messy middle isn’t asking you to become someone else.

Maybe it’s inviting you to come home to yourself.

Ready. Set. Grow. 🌿