After My Brother’s Death, I’m Embracing Uncertainty

I’m in my early 30s, and my professional life is better than I ever could have imagined. I established myself in my field, and my career continues to grow with time, which makes me feel grateful. If my job changes in the next couple of years, I know that I can adapt, and I’m confident that I’ll be able to flourish because I’ve switched my plans before. But my personal life is another story — and I feel uncertainty. 

I have no idea where I’m going right now.

My brother passed away almost two years ago, and it’s shaped the rest of my life ever since. I have lived with my family my entire life, but now, I’m moving out, and I don’t know what to expect for my future. As a person with a disability, moving out of my family home for the first time is scary. I don’t know exactly where I’ll live, and I’m not sure if the support I’ll receive will be as comfortable as the support my immediate circle has given me.

Still, my move is exciting because I waited over two years for this to happen.

I’m looking forward to living as independently as I can and meeting new people. Although my brother’s death put my plans on hold, I’m confident that I’m ready for this move now, and I know that my mental health is much better than it was back then, too. I have all of the tools I need to be able to succeed on my own.   

I don’t know exactly what to expect for my future, but I hope that moving will encourage me to pursue some of my other dreams too. After living independently for a while, locally first, I’d love to move across the country to be closer to my other sibling. Although this goal seems far off now, I remember when living on my own seemed so far away. Now that it’s time to start living on my own, I know that taking gradual steps towards my goals makes the bigger ones happen more quickly than I ever would have thought. I don’t know when I’ll meet my other goals — just like I don’t know exactly what it’ll be like to live on my own.

But that uncertainty is OK with me. 

Every time we reach new goals or life milestones, we may feel that the uncertainty and that sense of change we experience are really scary. We may wonder if we are making the right decisions for ourselves, but we need to remember to trust our intuition. Even though pursuing our dreams can make us nervous about the challenges to come, we will find the right time to go after them, and soon, the uncertainty we feel will no longer exist because we’ll find our places. No matter where you are in the process of achieving your life goals, and no matter how many times life sidetracks you, embrace the feelings of uncertainty when they come up. It’s OK to not know what the future brings — eventually, you’ll realize that the life that scared you isn’t so frightening after all.

Featured Photo by KaLisa Veer on Unsplash.