This week, we got the news that no business owner wants to hear: our building had been sold, and we were being asked to leave. No warning, no transition period — just pack up and go.

My first reaction? Honestly, it wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind of sudden, jarring disruption that puts your nervous system on high alert — the racing thoughts, the overwhelm, the mental to-do list exploding before you’ve even had your morning tea.

But as the initial shock settled, something unexpected happened. I recognized this feeling. Not just as my own stress, but as something I’d witnessed in the lives of hundreds of patients I’ve cared for over the past 16 years.

This was the feeling of an unwanted new beginning.

We Don’t Always Choose Our New Chapters

So many of the patients I work with came to me not because they made a bold, intentional pivot — but because life pivoted for them. A retirement they weren’t quite ready for. A marriage that ended. A body that started asking for different care. A home that suddenly felt too big, too quiet, too unfamiliar.

These transitions don’t come with a welcome sign. They arrive abruptly, often disguised as loss. And they ask something hard of us: to release our grip on the life we had planned — and find our footing in the life that is actually unfolding.

My unexpected office move, while stressful, reminded me of this truth in a deeply personal way.

The Nervous System Doesn’t Care How ‘Small’ the Disruption Is

Here’s something important that your clinical brain may already know, but that the rest of you needs to hear: your nervous system responds to change — all change — as a potential threat. It doesn’t distinguish between a minor inconvenience and a major life upheaval. It simply sounds the alarm.

For those of us over 60, this response is often amplified. Years of accumulated change — hormonal shifts, loss, caregiving, physical transitions — can mean that even a smaller disruption lands with more weight than it might have years before. Your baseline is different now, and that’s not weakness. That’s wisdom your body has earned.

So please, be gentle with yourself when change rattles you. You are not overreacting. You are human.

What I Did (And What You Can Do Too)

In the middle of the chaos — boxes, logistics, phone calls, decisions — I kept coming back to a few anchors that helped me stay grounded. I share them not as prescriptions, but as gentle invitations.

I paused before I spiraled. When the overwhelm started to build, I took five minutes just to close my eyes and breathe. Just five minutes. Eyes closed. Breath slowing. That small ritual reminded my nervous system that I was safe, even if the situation was uncomfortable.

I named what I was feeling. Not to dwell on it, but to acknowledge it. Stress unacknowledged tends to metastasize into anxiety. When we can say “I feel unsettled and that’s okay,” we take away some of its power.

I looked for the opening. Every forced change carries within it, hidden at first, an opportunity. A new space. A cleaner slate. A chance to set things up differently than before. I started asking: what could this make possible that wasn’t possible before?

The Lesson I Keep Relearning

We spend so much energy resisting what we didn’t choose. The retirement we weren’t ready for. The diagnosis we didn’t ask for. The chapter that began before we finished the last one.

But resistance, as any yoga teacher will tell you, creates tension. And tension, held long enough, creates pain.

Peace — not the absence of difficulty, but the presence of something steady beneath it — comes when we stop fighting the river and start learning to float.

My office will be relocated. It will feel strange for a while, and then it will feel like mine. And somewhere in the process of making it mine, I will have grown — just a little more comfortable with the truth that new chapters, even the uninvited ones, have something to teach us.