A Different Kind of Stuck
On identity inertia, the threshold, and how movement comes back
Stuff just keeps piling up.
These past weeks — between clients, a week at an in-depth retreat, writing, and a social calendar that has quietly expanded, happily — the to-do list has accumulated into something that feels less like a list and more like a presence. Household projects. Appointments to schedule. Daily errands. Personal planning. Work to coordinate.
I am completely capable of handling all of it. Prioritize, plan, execute — I know how to do this. I ran a man’s Alzheimer’s care like a project manager for four years.
And still, I find myself stuck. Not in the list itself, but in the space between the list and the things that actually matter. The significant work. The experiences I want to build this year. The habits I want to grow into. The version of myself I am still becoming.
It reminded me of another time I was stuck. A different kind — but the same feeling underneath.
In 2024, after Lee moved to memory care, I downshifted suddenly from constant demands on my time, attention, and focus — to nothing. The care and love and energy I had directed toward him for years had nowhere to go. I was relieved he was finally receiving the support he needed. And I also, strangely, missed being needed. (As it turned out, my caregiving skills were still needed, but that’s an essay for another time.)
My body was still in full-speed caregiver mode — tuned to schedules, routines, medications, rest — while my life had quietly moved somewhere else. Like Newton’s First Law of Motion: an object in motion stays in motion. I had been moving in one direction for four years. The direction changed. I hadn’t.
That is the thing about identity inertia. It happens on the inside, invisible.
Research describes Identity Inertia as the psychological resistance to changing one’s self-concept — the hidden force that causes people to hold on to old roles, behaviors, and narratives even when those things no longer serve them. We end up fighting against the very story we most need to write.
I couldn’t move forward. I wouldn’t move backward.
Because going backward is not a strategy.
But somewhere underneath the stuckness, something better was available. I could feel it. I just couldn’t see it yet.
What moved me forward was not a dramatic realization. It was smaller than that, and slower. Clearing the clutter at home and completing one thing at a time, methodically, instead of staring at the whole impossible pile. Returning my attention to my clients and their needs rather than my own spinning wheels. Organizing the scattered inspirations into essays — into something that meant something, to me and to the people reading it. Showing up in my community, consistently and intentionally, even when I didn’t feel ready.
Getting out of my own head. And back into my life.
There is a place — Gabrielle Dubois calls it The Threshold in her Substack Le Secret Club — where you imagine a different, better life, and slowly, without forcing it, it begins to feel not just imagined but almost familiar. Almost real. A life you architect from the ground up, not a reinvention but a construction. Something new, built from everything that came before.
I crossed that threshold. I don’t know exactly when. But I know I’m on the other side of it now, because the stuckness feels different. Less like paralysis, more like the natural friction of forward motion.
You don’t have to have lived the caregiver life to know this territory. Loss, career change, divorce, retirement, even success — any significant life change can trigger an identity shift, large or small. The point is to recognize it not as failure but as motion. The threshold is not the end. It is the beginning of something that doesn’t have a name yet.
Because that is how you move forward. Not all at once. While you are just living life — in quiet and subtle ways, in the things you notice, what you’re drawn to, the conversations you have, the experiences you say yes to.
And sometimes, in finally tackling the list.
You begin to feel it.
Movement again.
Out of inertia.
Back into life.
Back into yourself.
Have you ever been stuck at the threshold — able to feel something better ahead but not quite able to reach it? What moved you forward? I’d love to hear in the comments, or send me a message directly.
My "Stuck" is a lttle different, but fits into the narative of your writing. I am stuck in the middle of trying to figure out which way is up for me. I can't at this time see all the posibilities from where my head is right now. I see what I think I want but I'm not sure that's the correct path. I see what I don't want to be but maybe that is where I SHOULD be going. I have never doubted myself before. I always KNEW where I was going. I'm stuck in uncharted territory. It sucks.