Over the weekend, a Bible study prompt sent me somewhere I didn’t expect. It drew on C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, first published in 1942, a series of letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, coaching him on how to lead a person away from God. What makes the book unsettling is that Screwtape rarely recommends anything obviously wrong. He prefers to work through what’s good.

So I tried an experiment. I asked ChatGPT, which knows a fair amount about my life and work from our conversations, to write a Screwtape letter about me. My question came straight from that study: how might I be pursuing good things for God while forgetting to pursue them with Him?

What came back was uncomfortably personal, and you don’t have to share my faith to recognize yourself in it.

My first thought after reading it was how I could turn it into something useful for you. Then I noticed this reflex was exactly what the letter described.

Called, or needed

Screwtape starts with my work.

“She sees possibilities everywhere. An article that might encourage someone. A conversation that could change a life… Whisper that the work is important. Remind her of those who need what she has to offer.”

Then comes the instruction that stopped me: “remove the distinction between being called and being needed.”

It’s true. I see possibilities everywhere, and nearly every one of them looks like something I should do. An idea for an article turns into a draft. A conversation with someone in transition becomes a plan for how Betweenward™ might help people like them. All of it is good work, which is what makes the line so sharp.

Being needed feels like being called. Both feel urgent, and both tug at the part of me that has always wanted to help. The difference is that a calling is mine to answer, while a need can belong to anyone who notices it. When I stop telling them apart, every need I notice becomes an assignment.

I did this exercise on Sunday. I’m writing about it the evening before it publishes, and that delay is part of the story.

One belief, every room

The longer I read, the more I saw one belief running underneath every paragraph: that I have to earn my worth by being useful.

Peace is where it first hides. Screwtape advises Wormwood, “Whenever she finds a moment of peace, remind her of something she may have forgotten to worry about.”

Receiving is harder still. “Discourage her from needing what she so generously offers,” he writes, and then he lists the excuses I already use: other people have enough troubles of their own, and I’m fortunate compared with others.

Time gets the same treatment. Screwtape wants the years ahead to feel “less like an invitation to cherish the present and more like a deadline she dare not miss.”

Each of these is the same belief in different clothes. If my value comes from what I contribute, a quiet afternoon is wasted, and accepting help feels like a debt.

Why the pause feels like failure

This belief runs through nearly everyone I’ve coached in the in-between, whatever they believe about God. Coaching people through this pattern has made me quicker to recognize it in myself, though I’m not immune.

In The In-Between Isn’t a Waiting Room, I wrote that capable people tend to misread the pause between chapters as personal failure. Screwtape’s letter showed me why. A pause produces nothing. If your worth comes from what you produce, the pause feels like losing your worth.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the two halves of mattering: feeling valued and adding value. The letter showed me a capable person who lets the second half stand in for the first. Too often, I feel valued only while I’m adding value.

What Screwtape feared I’d find

Near the end, Screwtape names what he fears most. His patient might discover:

“That trust sometimes looks like leaving an important thing unfinished… That faithfulness may require her to disappoint someone, decline an opportunity, or allow another person to carry a responsibility she could have managed herself. Worst of all, she may discover that she is loved even when she produces nothing, solves nothing, improves nothing, and helps no one.”

That last line is the one I’m still sitting with. For readers who don’t share my faith, I’d put it this way: you matter on the days you produce nothing.

I believe that about every client I’ve worked with. Believing it about myself takes a different kind of practice, and this week gave me a small chance to try it. Since Sunday, I reread the letter several times. Every instinct I have said to turn it into an article right away. Instead, I let the idea wait until I was ready to share it, which is why you’re reading something I finished the evening before I published it.

Write your own letter

Anyone can try this. Find a quiet half hour and a notebook, and start with one question:

If someone wanted to wear you down using only your best qualities, how would they do it?

Then, if you want to go further:

• What am I carrying that no one asked me to carry?

• Where have my strengths turned into obligations?

• Am I offering myself the same patience I offer others?

If you use an AI assistant that already knows something about your life and work, you can ask it to write the letter, the way I did. Here’s a version of my prompt to adapt:

Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, write a letter from Screwtape to Wormwood imagining how my strengths and good intentions might wear me down or pull me away from what matters most to me. Draw only on what you know about me, and don’t invent details. Make it thoughtful and specific, not harsh.

If faith is part of your life, you can ask the question the way I did. Whatever comes back, treat it as a mirror. It can only reflect what you’ve shared, and you decide what’s true in it.

And yes, I noticed the irony of turning this into an article anyway. I’m letting that one go.

Ask yourself this: Where have you mistaken being needed for being called?

Sources

Lewis, C. S. (1942). The Screwtape Letters. Geoffrey Bles.

Letter excerpts are from a Screwtape-style letter ChatGPT (OpenAI) generated for the author, October 2026.

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D.

In November 2022, Michael J. Fox accepted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. By then, he had lived with Parkinson’s disease for more than thirty years, and many in the room knew him for his foundation as well as his films. He used part of his speech to go back to the beginning.

He was 29 when the diagnosis came. “Then I entered into seven years of denial, trying to make sense of it all,” he told the audience. “I told very few people. And they kept my secret.”¹ Through those years, he kept working, and he has since talked about turning to alcohol to cope.² He went public in 1998, while starring in Spin City.

One line from that night stays with me: “I only knew that it would get worse.” The diagnosis was certain. Letting it in took him seven years.

The script we reach for first

Sociologist Arthur Frank spent years listening to how people tell the stories of their illnesses. In The Wounded Storyteller, he describes the story most of us reach for first, which he calls the restitution narrative: “Yesterday I was healthy, today I’m sick, but tomorrow I’ll be healthy again.” Frank calls it the story our culture prefers.³

It’s also the story capable people have lived by in every other part of their lives. A plan breaks, and you fix it. A job ends, and you find a better one. Competence is mostly the skill of putting things back the way they were, and it works so often that we stop noticing it’s a script at all.

Seen this way, Fox’s seven years were the script still running. When everything you know says hard things get fixed, accepting one that won’t takes time.

I know that script from the inside.

Ten years of fixing

Jim has played sports since he was five. When his back started giving him trouble, he was still playing competitive baseball and softball, and he could run like a deer. Walking was what hurt.

So we did what capable people do. We found a spine specialist, then a new approach each time the last one fell short. Over ten years, that meant four back surgeries and a spinal cord stimulator, with injections for temporary relief in between.

I was the researcher. Every time something didn’t work, I went looking for the next thing that might, booked the scans, and rearranged our calendar around the next appointment.

After the fourth surgery, a specialist told us he wouldn’t recommend another. The odds it would make Jim worse were 50/50, and he said pain management was the best long-term plan.

The ride home was silent, each of us working through it alone. That evening we cried together, and Jim said, “I can’t handle worse.” So we turned the energy we’d spent chasing a fix toward everything pain management could offer.

Even then, the letting go came in pieces. Baseball and softball went first. Jim tried his best to hold on to golf and bowling, until golf became too much walking and twisting. Bowling lasted longest, until the night he came home from the alley and said, “I think I need to be done.” I agreed, and it hurt us both to say it.

We spent ten years trying to fix something we couldn’t fix. Degenerating discs only go one direction. What we could change was how Jim lived with the pain. “It is what it is” became our mantra, and now we plan everything, even the smallest outing, around his medication schedule so he’s as comfortable as possible.

When the script breaks

Frank describes two other stories people tell once restitution stops working. One he calls chaos: a life that “cannot be imagined improving,” told by someone too deep inside it to step back. Chaos stories are hard to listen to, so they often go unheard. The other he calls the quest, where people accept the illness and look for a way to make it useful.³

People rarely move between these stories in a straight line. Chaos often comes first, and a quest tends to grow out of it once someone is willing to listen. Fox’s life after 1998 is one of the best-known quests there is. Within two years of going public, he had started a foundation for Parkinson’s research, and he has written about living with the disease in several memoirs.

Where the script hides

Most readers won’t face a diagnosis like Fox’s or Jim’s. The script runs anyway, in milder forms that are easier to miss. You may see it in a job search aimed squarely at the role you just lost, or in a marriage you keep working on until it feels the way it used to. Sometimes it’s a body you keep training back toward how it moved before.

Each of those efforts can be the right one. What’s worth noticing is the assumption that rides along with it: that the goal is to get back to what was. As long as that’s the goal, the time in between feels like failure, and every month that normal doesn’t return counts against you.

In The Ripple Journey™, the Inner Wave is where the script is allowed to break. It’s the pause where you let what happened land before reaching for what’s next. For Jim and me, that pause began on a silent ride home and took years to finish.

Living inside what changed

In 2020, Fox stepped away from acting. Parkinson’s had made it hard to remember lines and work on set, and he later called the decision “non-emotional and kind of ok.” In 2026, he returned for a role in the third season of Shrinking, playing a character with Parkinson’s. He asked for the part himself. It’s “not the beginning of any campaign to reestablish my career,” he said. “Just do that for its own sake. I don’t have an agenda.”⁴

That’s what The Ripple Journey™ calls Still Water: living more honestly and fully inside what has changed, rather than returning to what was.

Our version is smaller and closer to home. For years, our shared social life ran through Jim’s games and the friends who came with them. When he stopped playing, we found that each other’s company filled what the games had left open. It’s amazing what we talk about when we’re not rehashing the results of a ball game. Our friends come to us now, and I get to entertain again, something I hadn’t done in years because we were always heading out to watch or play.

Ask yourself this: Where are you still waiting to get back to normal, and what might open up if you stopped waiting?

Sources

¹ Cohen, L. (2022, November 21). Michael J. Fox says he was in “7 years of denial” after Parkinson’s diagnosis. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-j-fox-parkinsons-diagnosis-7-years-of-denial-i-only-knew-that-it-would-get-worse/

² Guggenheim, D. (Director). (2023). Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie [Documentary]. Apple TV+.

³ Frank, A. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. University of Chicago Press. (Restitution, p. 77; chaos, p. 97; quest, p. 115.)

⁴ Michael J. Fox gives retirement update amid return to acting: “I don’t have an agenda.” (2026, January 29). Parade, reporting Fox’s interview with the Los Angeles Times. https://parade.com/news/michael-j-fox-gives-retirement-update-amid-return-to-acting-i-dont-have-an-agenda

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D. Her articles’ client stories are composites of several people she’s worked with over the years, with details changed to protect their privacy.

Guest article by Amanda Oliver

Consistent effort, collaboration, and delivering results are the true currency of leadership. I believed that with all my heart and poured myself into my work, constantly striving to produce strong outcomes and foster deep employee engagement. Whenever someone needed me, “yes” was my answer, and I was the “go-to” person for my boss for years.

“Can you step in to cover this department while we recruit to replace the former leader?”

“I’m assigning this new team to you because you’re our most experienced operational leader.”

“We need you on this national task force to represent our organization.”

Each request felt like a vote of confidence. Delivering success at the end of the assignment built my skills and showed my senior executive I was a capable leader. I expressed my desire for the next level and even discussed it in my 1:1. I worked through any constructive feedback and turned it into positive comments about my growth, to the point where I assumed the path ahead was as obvious to the decision-makers as it was to me.

I was proud to be the reliable go-to leader. So when someone else received the long-awaited promotion, the news hit like a physical blow. It completely shattered my sense of purpose and self-worth. I felt invisible. I had no direct feedback from someone I thought was mentoring me to the next level. Where had I gone so wrong, and how could I possibly pick up the pieces to move forward?

Gathering my courage, I sought raw, uncensored feedback from my HR partner. That conversation was constructive and gave me action steps my immediate supervisor didn’t. I connected with other leaders to broaden my strategic network. I actively sought out diverse projects within the organization to connect me with a broader audience. I took a leadership course, inspiring me to reset and focus on what mattered to me at this stage of my career. None of these steps was dramatic on its own. Together, they shifted my energy from waiting to be chosen toward choosing where to invest myself.

After some reflection, I also realized my idea of the next level may not be the best fit right now. I found gratitude where I was, the stability of my team, and the mastery to support those newer in their role. I could stand confident while I watched the uncertainty around me. My courage grew as I brought my voice to the table to promote value, clarity, and harmony for front-line middle management.

If you’ve been the one everyone counts on and still been overlooked, I know how disorienting that can feel. Reliability earns trust, yet it doesn’t always earn visibility. Sometimes the real work is asking directly for feedback, widening the circle of people who know what you bring, and being honest with yourself about whether the next rung is the one you truly want.

It’s interesting to notice how differently I operate today — with a deep sense of peace, gratitude, and purpose. What felt like a devastating rejection became a profound gift. It pushed me out of my shell and empowered me to lead with genuine heart and influence, no matter what shifts around me. That promotion wasn’t meant for me, but I carry something far more valuable: an abiding peace with where I am and the steady wisdom to recognize and take the right step whenever it arises.

Amanda Oliver, transformational and leadership coach, has spent more than 25 years leading healthcare teams toward operational excellence in quality, patient safety, and employee engagement. She gives people the tools to succeed in a positive environment while holding them to high performance standards. She also has a sharp eye for patterns that streamline work and improve results. Years of leading from the middle taught her to do it with confidence and ease. She sees the balance between family and organizational excellence as the key to longevity in healthcare. Amanda mentors individuals and groups, both in and outside healthcare, as they find their next steps, peace, and personal growth.

Clarity Coach | Founder of Essential Career Counseling

I help people who know something needs to change but aren’t quite sure what comes next. Sometimes the answer isn’t obvious because they’re too close to the situation. Sometimes they’ve been successful for so long that imagining a different path feels harder than it should. And sometimes they simply need space to step back, reconnect with what matters, and see possibilities they haven’t considered.

My work turns that uncertainty into clarity—and clarity into a next step that feels both meaningful and achievable.

Where I Come In

People come to me at all kinds of crossroads. They may be ready for a career change but have no idea what direction to take. They may have spent years building a career that no longer feels like the right fit. They may be returning to work after time away, considering a new chapter, or wondering how to make their experience count in a different way.

Often, they have more options than they realize, but it’s difficult to see them from where they stand.

I help people take a step back and look at the bigger picture: what they’re good at, what energizes them, what matters most, and what they want their working life to make possible. Together, we uncover connections between their strengths, interests, values, and opportunities they may not have considered.

The goal isn’t for me to tell you what to do. It’s for you to develop a clearer understanding of yourself and your options, so you can make decisions with greater confidence and move forward in a direction that fits.

The Way I Coach

My approach combines thoughtful listening, self-discovery, and practical strategy. I want you to feel comfortable exploring questions you may not have given yourself time to ask. I also want you to leave our conversations with something useful: a new perspective, a broader set of possibilities, and a concrete roadmap of your next steps.

When appropriate, I use career assessments to help make the invisible more visible. I am certified to use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Strong Interest Inventory (SII), and SkillScan, which help clients explore personality preferences, interests, and skills. Along with a Values Assessment, these insights provide a starting point for deeper conversations about career direction and fit—not a box to put you in or a single answer about what you should do.

From there, we connect self-knowledge with real-world possibilities. What might a career pivot look like? How could your existing experience translate into a new field? What would a more fulfilling next chapter involve? What small experiment or conversation could help you test a direction before committing to it?

Clients often tell me that our work helps them see themselves differently. Options that once felt out of reach become realistic, and an overwhelming decision becomes a series of manageable steps. I bring encouragement and optimism to the process, along with the practical information and structure to help turn insight into action.

What Shaped This Work

My work as a career counselor and coach is grounded in a simple belief: people make better decisions when they understand themselves and can see how their experience connects to the possibilities ahead.

Before entering career counseling, I held corporate positions in finance and management. That experience continues to inform how I work with clients. I understand the realities of organizations and the workplace, and I bring that perspective together with my training in counseling and career development.

I founded Essential Career Counseling to help people of different ages and career stages find direction, communicate their value, and pursue work that aligns with who they are and what they want. I am a Certified Master of Career Services, designated by the National Career Development Association (NCDA), and an Academy Certified Resume Writer. I have worked with individuals navigating everything from an early-career decision to a major career pivot, a return to the workforce, or a transition after decades in one field.

My work has included private practice, university and community college career services, and outplacement coaching. I have also provided career assistance through the California State Bar’s Lawyer Assistance Program and volunteered with organizations supporting people in need of career guidance. I’ve presented at national conferences, universities, and career events, and my career expertise has been featured in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Sacramento Bee.

Across all these settings, the part of the work I value most is helping someone recognize possibilities they couldn’t see before—and watching that new perspective change what feels possible.

What People Say

“I was ready for a change but unsure where to start. Linda’s program opened my eyes to various short-term and long-term career options that I hadn’t previously considered. Through our discussions and the assessments she provided, I gained greater clarity and confidence in my decision to pursue a different career path. Linda was very skilled at recognizing my strengths and finding new ways to leverage my current skill set in different roles and industries. She also gave me some really great practical advice around job searching, resume improvement, and how to negotiate.”

— Paula P.

“I found myself so deep in the day-to-day of my current position that it was so refreshing to take a step back and identify my career values and interests from square one. She gave me the tools to think through additional, realistic career options that might be good for me and tangible tools and plans to begin the search. ”

— Kyle R.

“Linda is amazing! Her all-encompassing approach helped me get clarity on a new career path following health issues, and a full career switch. She is truly caring and genuine, and made me feel comfortable from the very beginning of my time working with her. It has been a tough transition for me getting back into the workplace following time away, but she was so encouraging and helpful in getting a plan in place and making my goals seem much more attainable. I highly recommend Linda as a career coach to anyone, but especially those in times of major career and/or life transitions!”

– Jake T.

“Working with Linda was a great investment! Not only did I receive a job offer within ten weeks of meeting with her, I found her skills, encouragement, knowledge, and kindness to be incredibly helpful and valuable. I highly recommend you speak with Linda. I was nervous before our first meeting and worried about not being prepared or polished enough for the current job market and with her guidance and support I felt motivated and capable. Thank you Linda!”

–Tracy W.

If You’re Ready for More Clarity

You don’t have to know the answer before you begin. You don’t need a fully formed plan or even the right words to explain what’s changed.

You just need to be willing to explore what might be next.

Sometimes the most useful first step is a conversation that helps you see your situation in a new light.

Please email info@betweenward.com and write: “I’d like to explore coaching with Linda.”

From there, we can start a conversation to determine if we should work together to identify the possibilities that fit you and see what moving forward could look like.

Executive Leadership, Career & Business Coach | Founder, Empowered Leadership Coaching

I work with people who have spent years building successful careers, solving problems, and being the person everyone else counts on. Then something shifts. Maybe the career they’ve worked so hard to build no longer feels fulfilling, an unexpected change forces them to reconsider their future, or an idea they’ve carried for years starts demanding their attention. They know they want something different, but figuring out what comes next isn’t as straightforward as they’d expected. I help them recognize the options they already have, explore new possibilities, and create a practical plan to move forward with confidence.

Where I Come In

Most people don’t come to me because they lack ambition, experience, or ability. They come because the strategies that helped them succeed in the past aren’t necessarily helping them figure out what to do next. They’ve spent years making decisions, leading others, and navigating challenges, yet when it comes to their own future, they find themselves questioning everything. Sometimes they face an unexpected layoff and wonder how to position themselves in a changing job market. Other times they’re ready for greater responsibility but aren’t sure how to take that next step. Some have built impressive careers and are quietly wondering whether they want to spend the next decade doing more of the same.

I also work with people who feel the pull toward entrepreneurship. They have years of knowledge, skills, and experience, but struggle to see how those assets could translate into something they could build for themselves. They might have an idea they’ve been sitting on for years, or they may simply know they want more freedom and flexibility without having the slightest clue what that could look like.

Regardless of the circumstances, the work starts in the same place: understanding what they want, recognizing what they already bring to the table, and identifying the options available to them. I’m not interested in helping people throw away everything they’ve worked for. I’m interested in helping them use it to create something meaningful, whether that’s a new position, a stronger leadership presence, or an entirely different professional chapter.

The Way I Coach

I’m a strategist at heart, which means my coaching is grounded in practical action, honest conversations, and a healthy dose of humor. I believe people are far more capable than they sometimes give themselves credit for, particularly when they’re navigating unfamiliar territory. My job isn’t to tell someone what their future should look like. It’s to help them see possibilities they may have overlooked, challenge assumptions that are keeping them stuck, and figure out what makes sense for their circumstances.

Working with me isn’t about sitting through endless conversations about what you might do someday. We roll up our sleeves, get clear about what matters, and start making progress. Depending on what someone is navigating, that might mean strengthening their leadership presence, developing a strategic job search, preparing for a high-stakes interview, or validating a business idea before investing significant time and money. I bring structure and accountability to the process, but there’s always room for laughter, honest reflection, and the occasional uncomfortable question that needs to be asked.

One of my core beliefs is that options create freedom. You don’t have to make a dramatic leap, burn bridges, or gamble your financial security to create change. Sometimes the smartest move is to build what’s next while you’re still standing on solid ground. I want my clients to make decisions from a place of confidence and possibility, not fear or desperation.

What Shaped This Work

For more than 20 years, I built my career in corporate America, working my way through five promotions and eventually leading high-performing technical teams responsible for complex operations and business-critical initiatives. I loved developing people, solving complicated problems, and helping teams accomplish things they hadn’t thought possible. I understood how to navigate corporate environments, build credibility, and create opportunities for advancement because I’d spent decades doing exactly that.

At 50, I decided to leave corporate America and build my own coaching business. I’d spent years helping others navigate their careers and wanted to take that work in a new direction. What I discovered was that being highly successful in one environment doesn’t automatically prepare you for success in another. I knew how to lead teams, manage multimillion-dollar operations, and solve organizational challenges, but entrepreneurship came with an entirely different learning curve. I made mistakes, invested in things I didn’t need, and learned some expensive lessons about what it actually takes to build a business.

That experience gave me an even deeper appreciation for the uncertainty people feel when they’re standing between what they’ve always known and what they want to create next. It also reinforced something I believe strongly: you don’t have to start from scratch simply because you’re starting something new. Your experience, relationships, skills, and accomplishments are assets, even when the next chapter looks completely different from the last.

Those lessons have shaped both my coaching and my writing. My first book, Promotion Ready in 3 Months, focuses on helping professionals position themselves for advancement, communicate their value, and take greater ownership of their career growth. My second book, The Idea to Income Playbook, explores how people can turn their experience, skills, and passions into income-generating opportunities while making thoughtful decisions about their financial future.

Although the books focus on different paths, they share the same philosophy. We have more options than we often realize, and the experiences that brought us to this point can become the foundation for whatever comes next.

Today, I bring the perspective of both a seasoned corporate leader and an entrepreneur who has navigated her own reinvention. I understand the importance of having a plan, the discomfort of stepping into unfamiliar territory, and the value of having someone in your corner who can help you see the bigger picture while keeping your feet firmly on the ground.

What People Say

“She not only provided me with practical tools and strategies but also offered unwavering support and encouragement. Tabatha helped me see beyond the overwhelming sea of job postings, guiding me to focus on positions that truly resonated with my skills and aspirations.”

— Julie K.

“Tabatha’s coaching style is both supportive and insightful. She helped me become more organized and confident in my leadership abilities, both within my organization and in my professional sector.”

— Carla P.

“What makes Tabatha different is that her approach is structured, direct, and actually works — but only if you apply it. She teaches you how to clearly communicate your value, show up with confidence, and navigate the entire process strategically.”

— Nina H.

If You’re Ready to Talk

You don’t have to have everything figured out before asking for support. Whether you’re navigating a career change, looking to grow as a leader, or wondering if that business idea you’ve been carrying around might actually have potential, we can start with a conversation about where you are, what matters to you, and what might come next.

Email: info@betweenward.com

Note to send: “I’d like to explore coaching with Tabatha.”

No pressure or obligation. Just a conversation about your possibilities.

Founder, Step Out Coaching & Consulting | Author of Inclusionable: Transform How You Lead and Elevate Your Team’s Performance

Where I Come In

I work with people who know that they want to change something but are not sure how to do it. It might be something you are already doing well and you want to get to a deeper level of expertise. Or perhaps you want to branch out into a new territory. Maybe what “got you here” won’t “get you there,” and your go-to strategy is no longer sufficient. Together, we pause to notice what is happening, name the pattern, and consciously choose the next direction.

The Way I Coach

I consider you to be already being creative, resourceful, and a whole, wonderfully complex human with unique life experiences. Together we design our partnership (think of it as an alliance). I support you to be accountable for your learning and growth, paying special attention to the environments you are part of and what is going on around you. We use tools like values identification, journaling, and concrete ‘one sure thing’ steps to ground our work.

What Shaped My Work

I have worked for over 30 years as an internal organization development consultant in mostly STEM organizations, challenging and coaching senior leaders through complex issues. As a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) for over 10 years and an instructor at UC Berkeley’s Extension program, I believe that if I ask you to become more self-aware, I must be willing to do the same myself. I earned my doctorate in organizational change and leadership from USC, which led to a commitment to amplifying inclusion at work and to writing my Amazon best-selling book, Inclusionable: Transform How You Lead and Elevate Your Team’s Performance.

What People Say

“Working with Christine has been transformative. She created a safe and thoughtful space where I never hesitated to bring my recordings to her, trusting she would offer feedback that was both honest and kind. Her willingness to tell me exactly what I needed to hear has genuinely upleveled my coaching, and I am deeply grateful for the time we shared together.”

~ Doran N., Berkeley, CA

“Christine is an exceptional coach whose presence elevates both confidence and capability. Most recently Christine supported me as a mentor coach while I earned my ICF credential. Throughout our work together, she demonstrated a rare blend of deep expertise, intuitive listening, and a genuine commitment to my growth. Christine has a gift for asking the right questions—the kind that unlock clarity, challenge assumptions, and spark meaningful action. Her coaching style is both grounding and energizing; she creates a space where reflection feels safe and progress feels inevitable. What I appreciated most was her ability to balance strategic insight with heartfelt encouragement. Christine didn’t just help me refine my skills—she helped me expand my perspective and step more fully into my leadership. I’m profoundly grateful for her guidance and partnership.”

~ Jennifer B. Indianapolis, IN

“I worked with Christine Barnes as my coach for six months beginning in February 2025, initially to prepare for an internal VP role application and later to navigate the uncertainty of delays and organizational change. Throughout that time, she was a steady and thoughtful sounding board who supported my growth with warmth, insight, and genuine encouragement, and her approachable style made it easy to build a strong connection even virtually.”

~ Surinder K, San Francisco, CA

If You’re Ready to Talk

If you’re standing at a crossroads and wondering which path to take (or just trying to see a path), let’s talk. Conversations create possibilities, and possibilities create new worlds.

Email: info@betweenward.com

Note to send: “I’d like to explore coaching with Christine.”

Ruth wakes at 6:10, as she has for twenty-two years, and reaches for her phone before her eyes fully open. There’s nothing on it. Last Friday, she handed the nonprofit she founded to a successor she chose, and the handoff went better than she’d hoped. She makes coffee and stands at the kitchen window, holding the mug with both hands, listening for a question that isn’t coming.

For four years, Marcus set his alarm by his mother’s pill schedule. In August, she moved into assisted living across town, where the staff now handle her medications and the calls in the middle of the night. His body still wakes him at 5:45. He visits most afternoons, and she’s always glad to see him, but on the drive home he can’t shake the feeling that he’s been demoted to guest.

Lena came back to work in September after eight months of treatment. Her old job, running a team of forty, was waiting for her, and her boss made sure she knew it. She turned it down, asked for a smaller role with saner hours, and hasn’t regretted it once. Still, at Thursday’s all-hands, when her former team’s results go up on the screen with someone else’s name beside them, she claps along with everyone else and feels, for the first time in years, like a spectator.

Each of them would tell you they’re where they want to be. And all three ask the same question, often at odd hours and mostly to themselves: If I’m not running something, do I still matter?

Where mattering used to live

For people who have always been the capable one, mattering and being in charge have usually shown up together. The role answered the question before anyone thought to ask it because people brought you the hard problems, and decisions waited for your yes.

Most of the evidence was built into the structure: your name on the invite, and the meeting waiting for you to show up. Nobody had to say you mattered, because the calendar said it for you.

So when the role goes, whether you chose to leave it or it ended without asking you, the question it used to answer comes to the surface, sometimes for the first time in years. And the most natural conclusion is the one all three are half-drawing: to matter again, I’d need to be running something again.

The two halves of mattering

Researchers have a name for what the role was supplying. Morris Rosenberg and B. Claire McCullough introduced the idea of mattering in 1981, describing it as feeling important to other people.¹

Psychologists Isaac and Ora Prilleltensky, authors of How People Matter, give the idea a shape that’s especially useful here. “Mattering consists of feeling valued and adding value,” they write, “to ourselves and others.”^2,3

A leadership role delivers both halves in one package. People value you for the role, and the role gives you a built-in way to add value every day. The halves come bundled, so you rarely have reason to tell them apart. But when the role ends, both leave with it, and it’s easy to assume the only way to get them back is another role like the last one.

Why it reaches so deep

In 2024, a team led by psychologist Monica Paradisi pulled together 30 published reports on mattering, covering more than 18,000 people. Across them, people who felt they mattered tended to report higher well-being, and the strongest connection was with the kind of well-being that comes from meaning and purpose. The link held regardless of age or gender.⁴

That last finding is worth sitting with if you’re in the in-between. The need to matter outlasts any title you’ve held, and it stays with you at every point in a life.

Which half is missing

Seeing the two halves opens up a more useful question: which one is missing?

The answer differs from person to person, which is part of why the old conclusion misleads. Ruth is still valued. Her board gave her a lovely send-off, and the thank-you notes keep coming. What she’s missing is the daily chance to put what she knows to work.

Marcus spent four years adding value every hour of the day while almost no one noticed, so he has lost a half he barely had. Lena still adds value in her new role, but the person with the title got the recognition, and she misses being seen more than she expected.

For many capable people, the second half leaves the bigger hole. Being thanked for what you’ve done feels different from being needed for what you can do. When people tell you you’ve earned your rest, they mean it kindly, and it can still land like being shown the door.

That second half needs a place for your experience to land, and someone to receive it. A title is one way to arrange both, and it’s only one.

Rosenberg later drew a distinction that helps here. He separated mattering to particular people, the ones who would notice if you stopped showing up, from mattering to society at large.⁴ Both are real forms of mattering. Capable people tend to measure their contribution the way their jobs taught them to: in scale and in results someone could put on a slide; by that measure, helping one person can feel too small to count. Rosenberg’s distinction puts the two side by side, and the person receiving your help would never call it small.

Where it turned up

In the third week, Ruth’s successor calls with a question about a longtime donor. Ruth answers it in ten minutes and hangs up feeling something she can’t name at first. She wasn’t deciding anything. She was helping, and it felt like the best part of the old job, with the weight lifted. Before the week is out, she tells her successor to call anytime about donors, and she means it.

Marcus waits in the lobby one afternoon when a woman moving her father in sits beside him, holding a folder of medication forms and looking the way he must have looked four years ago. He spends forty minutes walking her through it, and on the drive home, he doesn’t feel like a guest.

A junior colleague asks Lena to look over her slides before the next all-hands. Lena spends an hour on them, mostly asking questions. When the presentation goes well, she claps along with everyone else, and this time she feels part of the room.

Each is small, and none settles the question for good. They point in a direction, though. In The Ripple Journey™, this is the Outer Wave: the stage where your experience serves others without forcing it, and the value you carry finds its use.

Mattering often comes back this way, one person at a time, long before anyone offers you another title.

Ask yourself: Which half of mattering have you been missing, feeling valued or adding value? And where might the one you’re missing already be within reach?

P.S. If you’re in the in-between and want a room to name it, join me for Between Currents™ on October 21. It’s free and live. Details here.

Research cited

¹ Rosenberg, M., & McCullough, B. C. (1981). Mattering: Inferred significance and mental health among adolescents. Research in Community and Mental Health, 2, 163–182.

² Prilleltensky, I., & Prilleltensky, O. (2023, November 13). Knowing that you matter promotes health and happiness. University of Miami News. https://news.miami.edu/stories/2023/11/knowing-that-you-matter-promotes-health-and-happiness.html

³ Prilleltensky, I., & Prilleltensky, O. (2021). How people matter: Why it affects health, happiness, love, work, and society. Cambridge University Press.

⁴ Paradisi, M., Matera, C., & Nerini, A. (2024). Feeling important, feeling well: The association between mattering and well-being. A meta-analysis study. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25, Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00720-3 (also the source for Rosenberg’s later distinction between interpersonal and societal mattering)

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D. Her articles’ client stories are composites of several people she has worked with over the years, with details changed to protect their privacy.

Co-founder of Betweenward & Founder of Transition & Thrive

I work with people who’ve always been the one who figures it out. This time, they can’t see the next move — and neither could I, more than once, before I built a way to name what that actually is.

Where I Come In

People usually find me mid-stride, not standing still. A role that ended without much warning. A season of caregiving that’s quietly taken over a life that used to have room for other things. A career that still looks fine from the outside and doesn’t feel that way from in here. Every one of them built a way of solving things that’s worked for years — and this is the first time it hasn’t held.

I don’t start by asking what’s wrong. I start by helping someone see what’s actually shifted, so the ground beneath them stops feeling like it’s giving out.

I also come in when people feel stuck, are at a crossroads, or want structure before choosing a coach. That entry point is the 60-minute Ripple Clarity Session. This session focuses on values and meaning, what’s working and what isn’t, direction, and next-step experiments. From there, a client may continue into ongoing Ripple Journey work with María, or she may recommend another coach depending on the client’s needs.

The Way I Coach

My work blends steady listening with practical structure. Values discovery, enhanced skills assessments, and decision-making tools help people see their experience differently. It becomes raw material for whatever comes next. From there, we turn what surfaces into something concrete enough to act on.

I build customization and flexibility into how I work with clients, so although the programs and tools I offer may be standardized, how you use them and when they fit depends on your needs.

Clients tend to describe my approach as both reflective and forward-moving at once: room to think, and something to do with what they find.

What Shaped This Work

I’ve spent more than a decade coaching people through transitions I’ve already lived through. Before that, I spent years leading teams through corporate change, which is where I first noticed the pattern that would eventually shape my work: capable people are rarely thrown by the change itself. They’re thrown when they discover the way they’ve always pushed through doesn’t work this time around.

I wrote Upside Down to Right Side Up: Turning Transition into Triumph from my own crossing, and I still coach from that same place — having stood in it. There’s plenty of theory about how transition works, and I use it to support my approach, but my lived experience and my clients' experiences are the evidence of what works. In fact, it informed my latest life and career transformation framework, The Ripple Journey™, which is part of the foundation for Betweenward™.

What People Say

Working with María has been extremely helpful. She brings an incredible depth of insight, empathy, and strategic guidance to our conversations. She understands the unique challenges and opportunities that come with navigating change, career pivots, life transitions, and personal goals. Her coaching is rooted in practical wisdom, genuine encouragement, and a deep respect for each person’s individual path.

— Kim K.

What sets María apart isn’t just her expertise; it’s how she shows up for you as a person. She is empathetic and completely nonjudgmental, which made it easy to be honest about my fears and uncertainties during a vulnerable time. She doesn’t let you stay at the surface level; she asks the questions that make you dig deeper, reframe your strengths, and reconnect with your core values in ways you hadn’t considered before.

— W. Weekes

Working with María, I was quickly inspired to explore a new path, one that I would find fulfilling and engaging. Her assignments and tools took me on a journey of self-reflection that helped me articulate both what I would love and what I no longer wanted to do. I have choices.

— Liz L.

If You’re Ready to Talk

If you’re standing in that in-between stretch and wondering what a conversation might open up, that’s the only next step you need to take. Everything starts with a conversation.

Email info@betweenward.com and write: “I’d like to explore coaching with María.”

You’ll hear back personally. No pressure or obligation. Just a conversation about where you are.

Co-founder of Betweenward & Publisher of What Time Binds

I work with people whose sense of who they are was built inside a role: a rank, a title, a seat on the org chart. When the role ends, the skills stay and the words for them go missing. I help people find those words and build the next thing on ground that holds.

Specialties: Identity After the Role | Military-to-Civilian Transition | Job & Graduate School Applications

Where I Come In

People usually reach me when someone asks, “So what do you do now?” and the answer won’t come. The uniform came off, or the title went away on someone else’s schedule, or the résumé started to read like a stranger’s. Some arrive with a deadline: a job posting, a graduate program, a first interview in a field that speaks a different language. In the language of María’s Ripple Journey, I often meet people at the Drop.

I start with the question most coaches skip: why does your body resist the change your mind already wants? Once we answer it, we pin the word you use for yourself (“retired,” “former,” “just consulting now”) and decide together whether it still fits.

The Way I Coach

I coach the way I was trained to build. A combat engineer walks the site before anyone breaks ground, so we start with what is still holding, what has shifted, and what you can build on this month. The order matters. We work on feeling safe first, then on connection, then on purpose, because goal-setting stalls until your nervous system stops reading the change as a threat.

From there the work gets practical.

• Translating your experience. We rewrite rank, billet, and title in the words people in your next field use, and we name what each skill was and where it went.

• Applications. You work in one of the two workbooks I built: Map the Job for a role, Map the Program for a graduate program. For every requirement, you answer two questions in your own words: what do I bring, and what would I do once I’m there. We also find the magnet words in the posting, the phrases that could mean three different things, and plan the question that pins down which one they mean. You write every line that proves you belong, and no tool writes them for you. I pressure-test them.

• A written closeout. At the end you get a record of what we did, what you now run on your own, and what is still open.

One habit to know up front: I tend to answer three levels deeper than the question. So I ask early, short version or the full walk-through, and you set the depth.

Also offered: I help writers and coaches build and grow a Substack publication.

What Shaped This Work

I spent twenty-three years in the Marine Corps as a combat engineer: demolitions, construction, facilities, and project management. On recruiting duty, I was named Recruiter of the Year in 2001. Twenty-five years later, one of my recruits found me on LinkedIn. He had earned a commission and outranked me. I answered as the man I had become instead of the recruiter he remembered, and he did the same. I call that Personization.

Nine years in corporate facilities and business continuity followed. When I left that work in 2025, I sat up at 2:00 AM with a question my résumé could not answer: who am I without the role? The pattern I had seen in the Marine Corps and in corporate work showed up in my own crossing. People keep their skills and lose the words that connect those skills to who they are next.

I built the first version of Map the Job in 2016, a two-column worksheet for my own move from the Marine Corps into a facilities role at SCAN Health Plan. I have refined it with clients for ten years since.

My doctorate in Organizational Change and Leadership from USC Rossier gave me the research behind what I had lived: reinvention runs on biology, identity, and community together. Today I teach at UC Irvine’s Division of Continuing Education, and I publish What Time Binds, where I write about how institutions bend words and how the record holds them to account.

If You’re Ready to Talk

If you are carrying a question your résumé can’t answer, a conversation is the place to start.

Email info@betweenward.com and write: “I’d like to explore coaching with Jerry.”

You’ll hear back from me personally, and the first conversation carries no obligation.

Last week I wrote about Dana, the reliable one, who agreed to take apart her own job before the VP finished the sentence. Her turning point wasn’t a plan. It was one honest sentence, said out loud to someone who had stood where she was standing: this one is hard for me.

If you’ve been the steady one for a long time, you may know the stretch that comes before a sentence like that. You answer “fine” when people ask how you’re doing, and it’s mostly true. The work still gets done, and the calendar still holds. Underneath, though, something has shifted, and you can’t yet name it. A role that once fit sits a little heavier, and the future that used to seem obvious has gone blurry.

Perhaps you keep it to yourself. The people around you still need you steady, and saying it out loud can feel like admitting you’ve lost your footing. So you do what has always worked: think harder, plan more, push for an answer. And at four in the morning, the questions run anyway. Why don’t I know what’s next? I’ve always known.

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of sitting with people in exactly that place: the answer rarely comes from thinking harder alone. It tends to come after what you held in finally gets said, in a room where nobody needs you to have it figured out.

Most people in the in-between never get that room.

I’m opening this room for you.

Between Currents

Between Currents™ is a free, live, 90-minute workshop on Zoom, on Wednesday, October 21^st, at 10:00 AM Pacific. It’s for anyone between one chapter and the next: a job, a relationship, or a season of life that’s ending, or a shift nobody else can see yet.

There’s no need to know what’s next before you come. All it takes is a willingness to name where you are.

The session follows the Ripple Journey™, the framework behind much of what we write here at Betweenward™: the Drop, the Inner Wave, the Middle Wave, the Outer Wave, and Still Water. For ninety minutes, you’ll experience each stage directly, alongside others who are standing in the in-between too.

What previous participants said

“Sacred and necessary in preparation for the journey ahead.”

“I am less emotional now than I was an hour and a half ago.”

“This was an incredibly fast 90 minutes. Wow! So glad to have so many wonderful humans sharing time together.”

What you’ll leave with

• A private, written inventory of what you’re still carrying that has value: the judgment, steadiness, and experience that don’t disappear when a chapter closes.

• A map of the people, skills, and experience you can draw on.

• One small, specific next step to take that same week.

• Your Ripple Snapshot, a short before-and-after report emailed a few days after the workshop ends, showing your shifts in your sense of capability, your ability to act despite uncertainty, and your sense of meaning.

The Snapshot compares a brief assessment you take before the workshop with one you take after. The first one comes with your registration confirmation, so registering early gives you time to complete it before we meet.

The details

Save My Spot →

You’ve spent a long time being the one who holds steady for everyone else. For ninety minutes, you don’t have to.

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D.

Guest article by Tony Washington

Physicist Richard Feynman once described a stretch in his career when physics had stopped being fun for him. So he gave himself permission to stop worrying about whether the problems he worked on were important and just mess around with whatever caught his attention.

One day in the university cafeteria, somebody tossed a plate into the air. Feynman noticed the way it wobbled and started working out the physics behind the motion. He had no grand research question in mind or some larger purpose he was trying to serve. He was just curious about a wobbling plate, and so he followed that curiosity.

His little detour eventually connected back to work that helped earn him a Nobel Prize. But that’s not my point in telling his story. Long before that detour amounted to anything, Feynman had given himself time with no particular destination in mind.

I’m no physicist, and I see no Nobel Prize in my immediate future. But this summer, I unexpectedly found myself with a stretch of time that looked just as destination-less and as primed for curiosity.

In April, I resigned from a company where I had worked for 15 years to focus on a graduate program I had started in January. By May, the consequences of those life-changing decisions caught up with me, physically. I developed a persistent cough that progressed to a bad case of bronchitis, as if there’s ever a good case.

I finished my first semester in the program emotionally and physically drained, not how I wanted to start my graduate career. On the advice of a trusted friend, I opted out of summer courses to recuperate, even though doing so risked keeping me from my goal of finishing the program in under two years.

So, there I was at the start of June, destination-free. I had no priorities to fixate on except taking care of myself. No work and no school meant no predictable schedule to follow or demands to meet for the next three months.

Everyone’s dream scenario, right? How easily we tie productivity to our sense of worth can leave a mark you don’t notice until later.

I initially felt scattered, unmoored by the freedom I stumbled upon. You know that disorienting sensation you get when you wake up in a new place for the first time? That was my mornings the first few weeks.

I tried focusing on taking meaningful actions to provide some semblance of structure. I finished planning an ambitious fiction project I intended to start in the fall. I participated in a four-week seminar on “reimagining work,” a timely topic. I brainstormed on what I might do with the degree after I finished.

But those old high-achieving tools of the trade no longer worked. They were designed for tasks that didn’t fit where I was. And I was definitely somewhere else. Collecting my thoughts, as I normally would, felt like grasping at wet marbles on an already slippery floor.

Exasperated, I decided to do something I hadn’t had the chance to do in a very long time. I sat still and just let my mind wander, something scholars describe as spontaneous thought that moves with relatively few constraints.

I stopped chasing after the marbles and just let them roll, leaning into my curiosity to see where they might go. That included not judging their direction or distance, or even the velocity at which they traveled.

Sitting still knotted my stomach, of course. I had spent years developing a professional ethos of defining a clear purpose, choosing priorities that align with that purpose, and measuring outcomes against a clear idea of what progress looks like.

Underlying that ethos was a sense of movement toward some end. So, sitting still felt like I was forsaking the very core of who I was. Someone ever marching toward growth.

But an important question emerged in my discomfort: What happens when someone like me, accustomed to giving purpose and direction to just about every activity, suddenly has the freedom to let things just unfold?

I knew I was in a fortunate position to be able to take a detour off my path and explore. Opportunities like that don’t come along very often. So I decided to seize my moment.

In my limited reading on what I was about to embark on, I came across the recurring idea that wandering needs room to happen. That usually means unstructured time and fewer constraints on where your attention goes. I had both in abundance, though reveling in them took some practice.

Sometimes I set my alarm later than normal or not at all. Sometimes I woke up unprompted to go for a walk in the first morning light. I spent more time with my parrot Jewel, teaching her how to play with her toys and sitting with her on the front steps to watch the squirrels scurry about.

I met friends for coffee or lunch, and in the process met new people doing interesting things. I created new song lists to listen to while I write. I read without purpose, sometimes stopping midway through to look up references that piqued my curiosity.

Accepting that unstructured pace took some time. I didn’t realize how out of practice I was. Modern life tends to focus our attention on one muscle group (achieving life goals) while letting others atrophy (experiencing life itself).

But the more flexible rhythm of living helped me to flex my old muscles of noticing. Many of those marbles kept rolling about, and that was okay. A few landed at points of greater (though not full) clarity. Not a “wobbly plate” kind of epiphany, but enough insights to help me name what I was seeking, where I felt lacking, where I might grow, and how I might live more closely to my values.

One marble landed on work. The seminar on reimagining work helped me see how we narrow that concept to one arrangement (a job) and then cram it with so many functions (income, identity, community, status). Stepping outside that arrangement opened opportunities to imagine different ones.

Another landed on pace. I’ve never had a problem accepting the need for “good enough” when the moment calls for it. But other moments deserve the time it takes to get to a “damn, that’s good.” We could use a few more of those.

For me, creating space for those moments might mean choosing which of my two big passions gets most of my attention first. Trying to push both forward at the same time risks doing neither one well. I don’t have that sorted out yet, but at least I can name the decision more clearly now.

Life is filling back up again. I have classes, projects, and decisions to make. As I get back into the groove, my old professional ethos still makes sense. I see no reason to throw out purpose, priority, and progress.

But I might just have to leave a little more room before I start assigning purpose and measuring progress. Give some things enough time to unfold before I decide what they are or where they should go.

Looking back, maybe I shouldn't say I lost my marbles over the summer. It felt like that at the time, understandably. Maybe I just stopped insisting that they all stay where I put them.

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Tony Washington is a writer and systems thinker interested in how people make sense of complex situations. His work explores the interplay of cognition, technology, culture, and the environments that affect what people are able to see.

On a trail where the way isn’t obvious, hikers stack stones to mark it. A cairn [we pronounce it kehrn] doesn’t tell you where to go. It tells you someone stood here before you, found their footing, and thought the next person might want to know.

Cairns from the Community is where Betweenward publishes those markers, written by readers or writers. Each one is an account of a stretch of the in-between: a career that ended before you were done, a diagnosis, a season of caring for someone, a marriage that changed shape, a house gone quiet, or a room we haven’t named yet.

Why your story matters

The in-between is hardest when it feels like nobody else has ever stood in it. Research can map the terrain, and a framework can name the stages. Neither can do what one honest account does: show a reader that someone came through this and tell them what it was like along the way.

Your story doesn’t need a tidy ending. Some of the most useful cairns are left partway through, by someone still finding their footing.

What we’re looking for

• Your own experience, in your own words. Or you telling someone else’s story with their permission.

• What the in-between was like from the inside: what you expected, what surprised you, what helped, what didn’t

• Roughly 600–1,200 words

• Pieces already published on your own Substack or site are welcome [with a link back to the original]

How to share

Email your piece or a link to info@betweenward.com, comment here, or on one of our Notes with a link.

What happens next

We read every submission. If yours is a fit, we’ll reach out to talk it through, and nothing is published until you’ve approved the final version. You keep the rights to your work. Betweenward publishes it under your name, with a link to your own Substack or site, or under your first name and last initial if you’d rather keep it more private.

Someone is standing where you once stood. Leave them a marker.

The meeting was on Dana’s calendar as a fifteen-minute check-in. It ran forty.

By the end, she knew three things. The division was being folded into another one. Her role would end in six months. And leadership wanted her to run the transition: move the projects, place the people who could be placed, and keep the work steady right up to the last day of a job she’d spent eleven years building.

“Honestly, there’s nobody else we’d trust with this,” the VP said.

Dana said yes before the sentence was finished. By then, saying yes was a reflex, as automatic as reaching for a pen. Somewhere between the conference room and the parking garage, the math of it landed: six months of carefully taking apart her own work, with a team watching to see how she handled it.

That night, a text from her brother lit up the phone. Their mother’s lease was ending, and the family needed to decide about a move. “You’re so much better at this stuff than I am. Can you take the lead?”

She typed, “Of course,” and set the phone face down on the counter.

Nobody in either conversation had done anything wrong. The VP meant it as a compliment, and so did her brother. Both of them were right, too. Dana was good at this, and always had been. That was the whole problem, though it would take a while to see it.

Nobody decided this

If you’d asked anyone at her company when Dana became the person who handles the hard things, no one could have named a day. It was never a decision. A tricky client went to her once, then again. New hires who needed patience got routed her way. One spring the budget process fell apart; she pulled it back together, and after that the budget belonged to her. Each handoff made sense on its own, and she said yes to every one. Over eleven years, it all added up to a job description nobody ever wrote down.

Researchers have tested this instinct in its simplest form. In a 2015 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a team led by psychologist Christy Zhou Koval gave people ten essays to divide among four mentors who differed only in how much self-control each had shown in everyday life. The most disciplined mentor ended up with about 32% more essays than the least disciplined one.^¹

Nobody in that study meant to overload anyone. Giving the extra essay to the disciplined mentor felt like good judgment. That’s what makes the pattern so hard to see from the inside, because every single choice to lean on the reliable one looks reasonable. The weight shows up only in the total.

Calm under pressure

A month into the wind-down, Dana’s annual 360-degree review came back. The timing felt almost funny: feedback on a job that was ending.

The comments were glowing. Calm under pressure. Never drops a ball. The person everyone goes to. One colleague wrote that she made hard things look easy. She read that line twice.

Hard things did not feel easy. For weeks Dana had been sleeping badly, waking at four to go over which team members still needed placements. She wrote transition plans at night and handled her mother’s move on weekends. None of that showed up in the feedback. Not one colleague had noticed she was tired.

This is the part of the research that stays with me. In another 2015 study, Koval’s team gathered 360-degree feedback on 403 working MBA students from more than 2,200 coworkers and supervisors. The employees with high self-control reported making real sacrifices and feeling burdened by how much others relied on them. Their colleagues saw the sacrifices clearly. What they missed entirely was the burden.^¹

That’s what Dana’s colleagues saw. Every ball she kept in the air looked like proof she had room for one more.

You’ve got this

At home, things were good. That was part of what made it hard to explain.

Dana and her partner had been together long enough to finish each other’s grocery lists. When she came home the night of the meeting and told the story, her partner listened, poured two glasses of wine, and said what the people who love her always say: “You’ve got this. You always do.”

It was meant as faith, and she took it that way. Still, lying awake at four the next morning, she noticed something she didn’t want to say out loud. Even at home, she was the one who had it: the mortgage refinance, the vet appointments, the holiday plans, and now her mother’s move. Nobody had assigned any of it. Each piece had drifted to her the same way the budget had at work.

Koval’s team found this pattern at home, too. In a study of 139 couples, people with high self-control actually reported happier relationships overall. They also felt their partners relied on them more, and that reliance left them worn out from helping. The fatigue wore down their satisfaction, even in relationships that were working.^¹

Being the one who always has it costs something, even when the person counting on you loves you.

Picked for the work

The last big event before the division closed was a farewell lunch for the team. Dana planned it, of course. She booked the room, collected money for the cake, and wrote a toast that made two people cry.

Afterward, a handful of her team headed to a bar down the street. She heard about it the next morning, mentioned casually, the way people mention things they assume you already know. Nobody had meant to leave her out. One person said they figured she’d be buried in transition work. Another didn’t think it was really her thing.

She laughed it off, and it stung all day.

A 2021 study by a team that included social psychologist Roy Baumeister helps explain what happened. The researchers gave 285 adults short descriptions of people with high or low self-control and asked whom they’d want along in different situations. For duties and obligations, participants chose the person with high self-control. For vacations and parties, they tended to prefer the one with less.^²

Dana spent years being chosen. It never occurred to her to notice what she wasn’t chosen for.

I’ve always known

The company offered outplacement coaching as part of the transition package, which is how Dana ended up in my virtual office. She canceled twice. There was too much to do.

I should say here that Dana isn’t one person. She’s several clients I’ve worked with over the years, woven into one story, with more than a little of me in her, too. If she sounds like someone you know, that’s the point.

About twenty minutes into our first conversation, after she’d walked me through the transition plan, the placement list, and her mother’s move, I asked what she wanted next for herself.

She was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “And I’m embarrassed that I don’t. I’ve always known.”

That sentence is the one I hear most from people like Dana. They have spent years being the answer to everyone else’s problems, and when the question finally turns to them, the silence feels like failure. That silence is the in-between: the stretch after what was and before what’s next, where the old tools of planning, follow-through, and the reflexive yes have nothing to hold on to.

I’ve written before that this pause isn’t a waiting room. For the reliable one, it’s also the hardest room to stand in, because everyone around her is still handing her things to carry. Her reputation leaves no room for the pause, and neither does she. The work of the Inner Wave, letting what’s ending actually land before reaching for what’s next, might look like Dana dropping a ball.

For the first time in eleven years, that might be exactly what she needs to do.

One honest sentence

A few weeks later, Dana had coffee with Ray, a former colleague who had lost his own role in a reorganization two years earlier. She’d helped him rework his résumé back then.

He asked how the wind-down was going, and she started into the version she’d been giving everyone: on track, team in good shape, a few placements left. But she stopped herself halfway through.

“Actually,” she said, “this one is hard for me.”

Ray didn’t offer a plan or a pep talk. He nodded and said, “Yeah. Mine was too. What’s the hardest part?”

She talked for most of an hour. Nothing got solved, but she drove home feeling lighter anyway.

That’s the Middle Wave: someone who has stood where you’re standing, witnessing what you carry without trying to fix it or take it off your hands. For the reliable one, it’s also practice at something that doesn’t come naturally: letting someone see the cost, not only the output.

That weekend, Dana called her brother. She told him she couldn’t lead their mother’s move alone this time and asked him to take on the housing research. There was a pause on the line, and then he said, “Of course.”

She still doesn’t know what’s next. Somewhere along the way, though, she stopped treating that as a problem to solve by Friday.

If you’re the reliable one

When Koval returned to this research in an essay earlier this year, she noted that the demands on capable people pile up across work and home at once.^³ More than a decade after her first study, the pattern she found is as familiar as ever.

You don’t have to stop being the reliable one. It may be enough to let one person see what it costs.

Is there a Dana in your life? Send this their way. It may be the first time someone noticed.

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Research cited

¹ Koval, C. Z., vanDellen, M. R., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Ranby, K. W. (2015). The burden of responsibility: Interpersonal costs of high self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(5), 750–766. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000015

² Röseler, L., Ebert, J., Schütz, A., & Baumeister, R. F. (2021). The upsides and downsides of high self-control: Evidence for effects of similarity and situation dependency. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 17(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.2639

³ Koval, C. Z. (2026, February). Self-control is a strength, but being too good at discipline can backfire. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/self-control-is-a-strength-but-being-too-good-at-discipline-can-backfire-275634

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D.

A career ends before you’re ready to be done with it. A body stops moving the way it used to. Caring for someone else starts shaping every hour of your day. A world seems to change its rules faster than anyone can teach them to you — a marriage, a diagnosis, a home that empties.

Different rooms, the same floor plan underneath. We move through plenty of transitions in a lifetime, some fast, some slow, but the pattern underneath tends to repeat, and so does the way it feels while you’re standing in it.

Moving forward feels uncertain, and going backward isn’t something you’d even consider. So where does that leave you? We call it Betweenward. You’re standing in a room between what was and what’s next, and that room turns out to be real, with its own shape and its own timeline. It deserves your attention, whether anyone ever taught you to recognize it or not. Most people don’t; they rush right through it instead.

That’s a mistake because researchers have studied this space more than once, and what they’ve found changes how we should treat the in-between.

The middle isn’t one thing

Nearly fifty years ago, a former literature professor named William Bridges started writing about change, and noticed something that held up across every transition he studied: the outside event and the internal process are two different things, and the internal process moves through three stages: an ending, a middle he called the neutral zone, and a new beginning.

Bridges wasn’t the first to notice the middle has its own shape. Decades earlier, a French anthropologist named Arnold van Gennep studied rites of passage across cultures and found the same three-part structure everywhere: separation from an old status, a liminal middle belonging to neither the past nor the future, and eventual incorporation into something new. Cultures that built rituals around this didn’t treat the liminal stage as wasted time. They built ceremony around it because they understood it did the work that nothing else could.

Both maps agree on the shape: an ending, a middle, a resolution. The Ripple Journey doesn’t reject either one. It expands the middle they both compressed into a single stage, and it tells a different story about what the resolution itself looks like. That expansion didn’t come from theory. It came from thirty years of living through my own transitions, thirteen of them also spent watching the same pattern play out in the people I’ve coached: one middle was never enough room for what actually happens there.

The Drop is the ending Bridges described, whether it builds for months or breaks open in a single afternoon. What follows isn’t one neutral zone. It’s at least two distinct kinds of work, and they don’t arrive together. The Inner Wave comes first: permission to actually let what happened land, before reaching for whatever comes next. The Middle Wave comes later, often unplanned: a conversation with someone who’s stood where you’re standing, or someone willing to witness what you’re carrying without trying to fix it. Those are two different needs, on different timelines; both equally real.

Here’s where the Ripple Journey diverges most from the older maps. What we’ve found on the other side of the Inner Wave and Middle Wave is subtler than either theorist’s ending. We call it Still Water. It doesn’t resolve into the kind of new beginning van Gennep and Bridges each described: a single moment you can point to and say that’s where the old version of you stopped, and the new one started. It’s less a destination you reach than a place you notice you’re already standing in, once the questions that used to weigh on you finally loosen their grip.

That’s the shape of the whole arc. Knowing the shape doesn’t make the beginning of it any easier, though, and there’s a reason this particular stretch catches so many capable people off guard.

Why this time feels different

The people who end up here have almost always been the one who figures it out, not once, but reliably, over and over. They decided fast, adapted, moved forward before anyone had to ask twice.

That history is exactly why this particular stretch feels so disorienting. The tools that always worked before are still good tools. They just weren’t built for this room.

Something in you hasn’t failed, even though it feels that way. You’ve stepped into territory those tools were never built for, maybe for the first time, because every other time, you rushed straight through to what’s next instead of letting yourself actually stand here. That standing-still moment isn’t just a feeling. It’s been studied.

Why the pause matters

Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun spent decades studying what happens to people after their lives are seriously disrupted. They found that what separates those who are changed for the better from those who are just changed isn’t the disruption itself, or even how much time passes afterward. It’s what kind of thinking happens during that time.

They call the unhelpful kind intrusive rumination: the involuntary, repetitive replaying of what happened, which tends to keep people stuck rather than move them forward. The kind that actually predicts growth, they call deliberate rumination: chosen, effortful reflection on what the disruption means, what it’s cost, and who you are on the other side of it. The difference isn’t whether you think about what happened. Almost everyone does. What matters is whether the thinking is something happening to you, or something you’re deliberately doing.

That’s what the Inner Wave is: the deliberate kind of reflection Tedeschi and Calhoun found people need to come out the other side changed for the better, rather than just changed. If you’ve been feeling guilty for not already knowing your next move, you’re aiming that guilt at the wrong target. The pause isn’t what’s standing between you and progress. It is the progress.

Skip it, and the questions don’t disappear. They wait, and tend to resurface later, in the middle of whatever you rushed toward instead.

If this is you

If you’re standing in that space, especially if you’re the one holding everything together for everyone else, you’re not passing through.

You’re already one of us. Subscribe, and stay as long as you need the company.

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D.

Two Drops, One Ripple

The ambulance came fast that evening. One phone call, and suddenly everything else in my life went on hold — the business, the calendar, and the version of the day I’d planned. People recognize that kind of disruption instantly. Say the words “he was rushed to the hospital,” and everyone understands: this is a crisis.

I think of moments like that as a Drop — the single event that lands in the middle of a life and sends ripples outward, changing the shape of everything around it. A diagnosis is a Drop. A phone call in the night is a Drop. And the Ripple is what comes after: the widening, unsettled water you’re left navigating once the surface has been disturbed, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for years.

That week in the hospital was a second Drop, though almost no one would have called it that. There was no siren or single moment to point to; just seven days of being present, useful, and invisible all at once. Because it didn’t look like a crisis, it didn’t get treated like one. And for a while, I didn’t treat it that way either.

Both Drops belong to the same Ripple: the ongoing work of loving someone whose body needs more than love can fix. The first kind gets casseroles, phone calls, and people asking if you’re holding up. The toll from the second kind accumulates imperceptibly, in a hospital room over a week, in a home over years. There’s no single moment anyone can point to; just the accumulation, and the silence around it.

So I started looking for anyone else who might know that silence.

The Car You Suddenly See Everywhere

I started googling, listening to podcasts on the drive home from the hospital, and reading interviews late at night when I couldn’t sleep. And then I noticed something else — the same thing that happens when you buy a car in a color you thought was unusual, and suddenly you see it everywhere. Once I started looking, I found caregivers everywhere. Some private, some public, some as unlikely as a late-night comedian.

Jay Leno talked with Hoda Kotb on Today about caring for his wife, Mavis, through advanced dementia, and what struck me wasn’t the hardship; it was how he framed it. He described the toughest part of her decline: every morning, she relearns that her mother has died, and grieves it fresh, as if hearing it for the first time. He’s watched that happen for years. And in the same conversation, he reflected on what marriage vows actually mean once you’re called to live them out. Nobody expects to be tested on “for better or worse,” he said — but even the worse isn’t that bad.

I recognized that voice. It’s the same one in my own head most days — the one that finds meaning in the folding of towels, the shaving, the small tasks nobody assigns you but you do anyway because love looks like that now. Leno and I have never met, and our situations aren’t the same. But we’ve landed in the same emotional place: caregiving as honor, not burden.

Here’s what caught my attention, though, listening to that interview closely: every question was about Mavis. How is she doing? What’s she like now? What’s the hardest part of watching her decline? Not one question, in that interview, or in any other coverage I could find, asked how he was doing. He wasn’t asked about his health, his sleep, or what years of caregiving have cost him emotionally, physically, or mentally. One of the most visible caregivers in America, someone reporters clearly find compelling enough to keep asking about, still isn’t being asked the one question I was about to find waiting for me in a hospital room of my own.

What the Research Confirms

Once I recognized that pattern in his interviews, I wanted to know if it held beyond the two of us.

Family caregiving in America has exploded in the last decade. Caregiving in the US 2025, a joint report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, found that 63 million Americans — roughly 1 in 4 adults — are now providing ongoing care for an aging or seriously ill loved one, a 45% jump from just ten years earlier. One in five of us rate our own health as fair or poor. Nearly a quarter say they struggle to care for their own health while caring for someone else’s.

And the same report’s state-by-state companion, Caring Across States, found something I recognized immediately: healthcare systems routinely overlook caregivers, with few ever being asked about their own needs, despite their work being essential to how the system functions.

That gap isn’t new. An earlier Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that while most caregivers said healthcare workers listened to them and asked whether they understood the patient’s treatment plan, fewer than 3 in 10 were ever asked whether they needed help managing the caregiving itself.

What’s changed since then isn’t the gap. It’s the number of us standing in it. Twenty million more caregivers have joined the ranks since 2015, and the questions being asked of us haven’t kept pace.

The system knows what it needs to know to treat the patient. It still doesn’t ask what it would need to know to protect the person standing next to the bed.

The Room Full of the Wrong Question

I saw exactly what that gap looks like from the inside, during Jim’s hospitalization.

For a week, Jim’s room had a rotating cast. The hospitalist came by each morning, then the cardiologist, and the pulmonologist. The attending nursing staff checked in every couple of hours with medications, blood draws, and vitals. The respiratory therapist came four times a day, and the physical therapist whenever his strength allowed. Each one asked him how he was doing, and asked me what I’d observed — his breathing, his appetite, his mood.

I was happy to answer every question.

In seven days of rotating shifts and digital check-ins, no one asked how I was doing. [Author’s Note: except Jim.] The cardiologist didn’t. The nurses and techs who saw me there daily didn’t. No one on staff, across every discipline the hospital had, thought to ask how I was managing the business I still had to run from the couch in his room, or the household that didn’t pause because Jim was in a bed on the fifth floor.

And every afternoon, I was the one helping him brush his teeth, wash up, shave, and comb his hair — because no one on the nursing staff ever did. I wasn’t doing it for efficiency. I was doing it so he could feel like himself for a few minutes a day, in a place designed to strip that away.

Nobody in that room considered me part of the patient. And in the ways that mattered to my own health, I wasn’t being treated as one either.

Why No One Asks

I’ve wondered, more than once, why this gap exists. I don’t think it’s because doctors and nurses don’t care. Every one of them who came through Jim’s room was kind, careful, and clearly good at their job.

I think it’s simpler and sadder than that: there’s no chart for me. No vitals to record, no treatment plan that needs my consent, and no box on the form. The system is built to track the person in the bed, and everyone standing beside it falls outside the frame. I don’t believe it’s from cruelty, but because nobody designed a place for us to be seen.

That doesn’t make it acceptable. It does make it fixable, if enough of us name it out loud.

So I’d like to ask you directly, whether you’re reading this on Substack, or you clicked over from Facebook or LinkedIn wondering if this was about you:

Have you felt invisible in a room full of people caring for someone you love?

And if so, why do you think the system is built this way? Is it really just an oversight, or is something else going on?

I’d love to hear your answers in the comments. This is exactly the kind of thing Betweenward exists to talk about because none of us should be figuring it out alone.

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for people moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps people reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming work and life, and co-founded Betweenward™ with Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D.

I don’t know if you’ve been here, but if you have, I want you to know I see you.

One morning, I stood in my kitchen and saw the green tubing running from our bedroom into the living room. My husband was still sleeping, and the house was still. The tubing was there so he could move from oxygen in bed to oxygen in his chair when he was ready.

That was the moment it all landed differently.

We’ve been living with health challenges for a long time, so this caregiving journey didn’t begin yesterday. We’ve had diagnoses, adjustments, and new routines before this one. But this was different. This diagnosis, layered on top of several others, brought his mortality into plain view in a way I couldn’t ignore or soften in my mind. I couldn’t make it simply another appointment, medication, or small shift in the day.

Something about that green tubing made the change obvious.

I heard myself say to a friend, “This feels like the beginning of the end.”

Even writing those words now, I feel the weight of them. And maybe that’s part of what makes caregiving so hard to talk about. We don’t always have the right words for what’s happening while we’re in the middle of it. We’re managing equipment, appointments, medications, instructions, phone calls, and decisions. We’re adapting the house, the calendar, and the day’s rhythm. Underneath it all, we’re also carrying the emotional truth of what has changed.

When Love Asks for Something Different

I’ve been my husband’s wife for more than 30 years. I’ve been his partner, his companion, his person. We’ve built a life with all the ordinary and extraordinary things that make a marriage what it is. And laughter has always been part of us. So has honesty, and getting through things we didn’t expect.

Over the years, my role has changed many times. Lover, wife, partner, advocate, caregiver. Some days, those roles blend so completely that I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.

That’s the part many people don’t see. Caregiving doesn’t only change what you do. It changes how you listen, how you watch, how you sleep, and how you move through the house. It also changes how quickly your mind goes to the next practical question.

Is he breathing comfortably? Did the new medication help? What does that symptom mean? Will this treatment make things better, harder, or both? How is he really doing with all of this?

And then, somewhere underneath those questions, another one starts to surface: How am I doing with all of this?

That first week after the new diagnosis, I was on high alert — watching for signs that he was struggling with the new routine, and for changes in his breathing. I watched how he moved, how he rested, and how he responded. The future felt uncertain in a way I couldn’t easily name, and the questions kept circling. How would he adapt to this new reality? How would I?

The Conversations That Steadied Us

As the days passed, we began having the conversations that needed to happen. They weren’t grand, but they were real. The ones that come when you’re standing in the middle of something you can’t change and trying to decide how you’ll live with it.

We talked about acceptance and about how we couldn’t change this new situation, only how we would respond to it and build our days around it. We talked about gratitude, too, because even though his body is breaking down in ways we wish it weren’t, his mind is still sharp. That matters. Every. Single. Day.

And we talked about wanting to make the best of our time together, whatever that time turns out to be.

Those conversations didn’t make everything easier, but they did make things more honest. Something about telling the truth together feels very grounding. It doesn’t remove the grief or the fear, or answer every question. But it keeps you from standing alone in the middle of what has changed.

Then, sometime during that first week, his humor came back.

He looked at me with that familiar smirk and said, “At least now I can breathe easy, and I won’t take it for granted.”

There he was. That was my thought. There he is.

I can’t tell you how grateful I was for that moment. He could have chosen anger and turned it toward the situation, the equipment, life, even me. And I would have understood. Instead, my hubby chose to ride this rollercoaster with me the way we’ve ridden so many others, laughing with our hands in the air, sliding into home base with a smile.

That doesn’t mean we’re pretending this isn’t hard. It means we’re still us inside it.

The Ripple Starts Again

I often talk about the Ripple Journey because transitions rarely move in a straight line. Something happens; I call it The Drop, disrupting what had become familiar. Then the waves begin again.

This new diagnosis was another Drop in a long caregiving journey. It changed the room, the routine, and the way the future felt when I looked toward it. The Inner Wave was the pause we both had to take, the honest conversations, the acceptance that life had shifted again, and the tenderness of admitting what we could and couldn’t control.

The Middle Wave came through the people who knew what to do next. Medical experts helped us understand the equipment, explained how it worked, how to navigate with it, and how to integrate it into daily life without letting it take over every corner of our home.

The Outer Wave came through my dearest friends. They listened and acknowledged how hard this was. They gave me room to feel it without rushing me toward a brighter interpretation. They prayed with me and let me cry. And they helped me return to the practical steps I could take, one day at a time.

Sometimes support looks like advice. This time, it looked more like presence.

Slowly, Still Water began to return. It wasn’t that everything was fine, or that the fear disappeared. It returned because we began to settle into the new normal and make the best of it. We learned where the tubing needed to go and how to move around it. We adjusted to what the day required now. And we began to breathe again inside what had changed.

For the Ones Carrying This Quietly

I’m sharing this because I know there are so many of us moving through seasons like this in silence. We bear it, adjust to it, and love through it. We watch as we keep living inside what has changed, even when we don’t always have words for how much it has changed us.

Some are caring for spouses, aging parents, adult children, siblings, friends, or neighbors. Some are sandwiched between generations, tending to growing children on one side and aging loved ones on the other. Many of us do it while still working, leading, showing up, answering emails, keeping commitments, making dinner, paying attention to everyone else’s needs, and wondering when we’re allowed to admit we’re tired.

Caregiving can be full of love, and it can also be lonely. Both can be true at the same time.

And when your role changes, it can shake something deep inside you. You may still be a wife, husband, daughter, son, parent, friend, or partner, but the way you inhabit that role may feel different now. More watchful. More responsible. More tender. More aware of time.

That kind of change deserves a name.

We don’t always know how we’ll respond when The Drop hits. I didn’t. I don’t think most of us do. We find out in real time, often while we’re trying to understand instructions, make decisions, and keep our hearts from running too far ahead.

For me, leaning into my faith is the best thing I can do. I lean in big, deep, and hard because that’s where I find enough steadiness for the next step. For you, it may be faith, too. Or friendship. Or therapy. Or prayer. It might be a walk outside, writing in a notebook, or reaching out to the community that lets you tell the truth — or it could be one trusted person who can hear you say the thing you’ve been holding back.

Whatever steadies you, lean in. You don’t have to carry this season without support or make your courage look polished. And you definitely don’t have to rush yourself past the ache just because other people don’t know what to say.

Still Water isn’t a place where nothing changes. It’s where we learn to breathe again inside what has changed.

That’s where we are right now, my husband and I, living inside a reality we didn’t choose. We laugh when we can, tell the truth when we need to, and make the best of the time we have.

And adapt again, one day at a time.

María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for women moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps women reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for transforming your work and life. She is a co-founder of Betweenward™.

I know the fixer reflex because I’ve lived inside it my whole life.

So when my client told me what happened, I recognized the look on her face before she finished the story. One of her team members, usually the most buttoned-up presenter she had, showed up late to a product launch meeting with an important client and stumbled through it. Unprepared. Off his game in a way she’d never seen from him. The client noticed. She could feel the relationship wobbling in real time.

She’d already built the plan by the time she sat down with me. She was going to reach out to the client herself, smooth things over, and quietly start looping in a more seasoned team member for anything client-facing going forward. Efficient. Protective. The kind of move that saved her more than once before.

“What would happen if you let him find his own way through this?”

She looked at me like I’d asked her to do something reckless.

She sat with that question longer than usual. I watched her turn it over, resisting the pull to answer it the way she answered everything: quickly, competently, with a plan already halfway built. For a few seconds, she didn’t fix anything. She just sat in not knowing what the right move actually was, which, for someone who’d built a career on always knowing, was its own kind of hard.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’ve never let someone sit in a mess like this before.”

I wasn’t there to give her the answer either. My job was mostly to keep asking the next honest question, so she had somewhere to put the discomfort besides a fast solution.

That not-knowing was the beginning of something, even though it didn’t feel like progress. It rarely does, in the moment.

What Came Next

Over the following weeks, she didn’t disappear into fixing, and she didn’t leave her team member to flounder either. She asked him what was going on, and learned about the situation at home that had thrown him off. She asked him what he thought he needed, rather than telling him what she’d decided he needed. It was slower than her instinct wanted, and required her to tolerate a version of “in progress” that had no guaranteed ending.

He asked for two things: a little grace on deadlines for a few weeks, and a chance to rebuild the client relationship himself rather than have it quietly taken from him. Neither was a guarantee. She could have overridden both requests in an afternoon and probably felt more in control doing it.

She didn’t. She gave him the grace and stayed close without stepping in, checking in without checking up. Three weeks later, he asked for a second meeting with the client himself, prepared this time, present in a way he hadn’t been the first time around. The client agreed. The account held because she’d let him fix it.

What Staying in the Mess Actually Cost Her

I don’t think people would have called what she did brave if they’d been watching. There was no dramatic conversation or visible risk. From the outside, it probably looked like she simply did less than usual.

But I know what it cost her because I know the feeling from the inside. Every instinct she had was built for speed and certainty, and she spent three weeks doing the opposite: staying slow, staying uncertain, resisting a fix she could have executed in an afternoon. That kind of restraint doesn’t get applause. Nobody sends a note praising the crisis that didn’t happen because you let someone else grow into solving it.

This is where I think the Inner Wave of a transition often hides in plain sight. It happened in a pause like hers: sitting with a discomfort long enough to actually notice it, instead of moving past it toward the fastest available relief.

What I Tell Myself When the Reflex Kicks In

I still feel that fixer pull constantly, in my own life and with clients. It hasn’t gone away. What’s changed is my relationship to it. I’ve learned to notice the reflex arriving, the same fast, competent certainty my client felt, and to ask myself a version of the same question I asked her: is this actually mine to fix?

Sometimes the answer is yes, and I move. Often, especially with the people I love most, the answer is no, and the harder, quieter work is staying with them.

Where in your life is the reflex to fix asking you to move faster than the situation needs?

If something in this article struck a chord and you know someone who might benefit, please share it.

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María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for women moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps women reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for work and life transformation. She writes about the quiet, unglamorous work of becoming who you’re meant to be next.

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At first, I couldn’t place the sound I heard.

I’d just climbed out of the water at Slide Rock, still catching my breath from the cold, standing on the bank while the July sun dried my shoulders. The creek in front of me looked exactly like it had ten minutes earlier. It was clear and moving at its usual unhurried pace over the red rock. Nothing about it looked capable of what I heard coming.

There was a low rumble at first, somewhere upstream, low enough that I almost mistook it for thunder. Then it got louder, closer, until it wasn’t a sound anymore so much as a presence, something moving toward me with a power the creek didn’t have a minute before.

I stepped back from the bank instinctively. And then, I watched the water change before my eyes. It was the same creek and the same rocks, but they transformed in what felt like seconds into something faster and darker. It carried branches and debris I hadn’t seen anywhere near it before.

I stood safely back and felt two things at once: awe at how fast it happened and a quiet, physical gratitude that I’d gotten out when I did.

What I Recognized in the Water

It’s taken me a while to understand why that moment has stayed with me the way it has many years later. It wasn’t so much about the flash flood, although that was scary. It was about how ordinary everything looked right up until it wasn’t.

I’d been in that water minutes earlier, and nothing about it warned me. There was no shift in color upstream or change in temperature. My senses didn’t catch anything before my ears did. The disruption didn’t announce itself. It just arrived, fully formed, while I happened to be standing close enough to feel its force.

I’ve thought about that morning every time I’ve found myself back in the messy middle of a transition, which, if I’m honest, has been more times than I expected by now. A diagnosis. A loss. A decision that upended a plan I’d built a life around. None of them announced themselves the way I wish they had. They arrived the way the current at Slide Rock did: sudden, loud only once they were already close, and impossible to have fully prepared for no matter how carefully I’d been watching the water.

What the Current Taught Me, Once I Was In It

Here’s what I didn’t expect. Standing on that bank, watching the current change, I was both afraid and amazed. There was something almost holy about it. It was a force moving through that canyon with a power I had no part in and no control over.

That’s stayed with me too, longer than the fear did. Because most of the disruptions I’ve lived through since have carried some version of that same, uncomfortable truth: the force that scared me also made me keenly aware of how fast a life can shift, and how much of what I thought was solid ground was really just calm water — temporarily.

I think this is part of what the Middle Wave of The Ripple Journey™ holds. It’s that strange mix of fear and clarity arriving at once, neither one canceling out the other.

What I Know Now About Standing on the Bank

I wasn’t in the water when the current changed. I’d gotten out minutes before, for no immediately apparent reason. I’ve wondered since whether it was luck, instinct, or divine timing. I suspect the latter. Regardless of the reason, what I did once I heard the sound matters: I stepped back. I didn’t argue with the water or wait to see if it was really as strong as it sounded before I moved.

I wish I could say I’ve always responded to life’s sudden currents that well. I haven’t. Some I’ve stood too close to for too long, certain I could outlast them before they reached me. But I’ve gotten better, slowly, at trusting the sound before I can see the water, and at believing a change is real before it’s fully arrived. And I’ve learned to move accordingly, rather than wait for proof.

The creek at Slide Rock went back to looking calm within an hour, the way these things do. You’d never have known, walking by that evening, what had moved through it that afternoon. I think most of us have experienced a few stretches of water like that. Calm on the surface, with evidence of the flood still there if you know where to look.

What sound have you learned to trust before you could see what was coming?

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María Tomás-Keegan is a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for women moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps women reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for work and life transformation. She writes from the moments that taught her the most, including the ones she didn’t see coming.

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David was twenty-four, sitting on the floor of the Kingston airport, playing his thumb piano. He had just been expelled from a church work camp in Haiti, with the rest of the summer suddenly open in front of him. So, he did what he always does. He played.

A man stopped to listen and asked about the instrument. The two of them talked, and it turned out the man ran Jamaica’s board of tourism. He had a large house in Kingston, and he offered David a room there, free of charge, for the rest of the summer. David spent the next several weeks traveling the length of the island as his guest.

That is where his curiosity took him. To understand how he got there, you have to go back a few months, to an orientation room in Port-au-Prince.

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The three kinds

When I asked David how he keeps his curiosity alive at 80, he didn’t reach for a memory. He looked it up. He typed the word into his phone, read me the definition out loud, and started sorting himself into the categories.

There are three kinds, he told me. Diversive curiosity, the pull toward anything new. Epistemic curiosity, the drive to know one subject all the way down. And empathetic curiosity, the wish to understand what another person is feeling and thinking. He claimed all three. He owned the first one with a confession: he has been called snoopy, and once asked a woman at a dinner so many questions that she told him she felt interviewed, so he backed off.

The one that stuck out is the third. For David, empathetic curiosity is how he gets close to people, and getting close to people is how he gets close to himself. “By dancing with other people,” he said, “it helps me get in touch with the dance inside of me.”

My own curiosity runs on a different question. Where David reaches for what a person is feeling, I reach for how a thing works, the mechanism under the surface. Same engine, different target.

Careful and diligent

He found something in the etymology that stopped him. The word curiosity comes from the Latin for careful, or diligent. He asked me why care would sit at the root of curiosity. The link is attention. A curious person looks at what most people walk past. We all run on shortcuts, the mental rules that get us through a day without examining everything. Curiosity is the diligence to set the shortcut down and look again, to ask the question the room has agreed not to ask.

The animal test

David is precise about why he guards this. He told me, with no apology, about a visit to his doctor. Everything checked out, and then the doctor said he wanted to run one more test, given David’s age. A test for dementia.

David did not care for the word. He decided, on the spot, that whatever else went in his file, that word would stay out of it. The test was simple: name as many animals as you can in one minute. Go. Zebra, horse, dog, cat, moose, giraffe, lion, rat, on and on. The threshold was sixteen. He got eighteen, barely clearing it. The next year he practiced and got twenty.

Then he delivered the punchline he had been setting up the whole time. The real reason he stays curious, he said, is so nobody finds out he’s demented. He let it land, the way the two women who each lived to 103 told him never to lose the joke. The joke carried the truth underneath it: he keeps his curiosity in shape the way other people keep a muscle in shape, refusing to let it go slack.

Port-au-Prince, 1970

Which brings us back to Haiti.

In 1970, David joined a volunteer work camp building a public health dispensary in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Two groups sponsored it: the Church of Christ and the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker organization. He had spent three years in Africa studying the instruments connected to religious ceremonies, and he had come to Haiti to do the same with the music of voodoo.

At orientation, they told him the rule. While he was on the island, he would not be permitted to attend voodoo ceremonies. David raised his hand. He said that studying those ceremonies was the entire reason he had come, and that the ban looked to him like religious discrimination. They held the line. Attend a ceremony, they told him, and you are out of the program.

He understood the choice in front of him. He had watched conservative missionary groups across Haiti work to replace what people remembered of their own music, art, and religion. He did the pick-and-shovel labor on the dispensary for a few months. And he went to the ceremonies anyway. They expelled him.

The door in Kingston

The trait that got him thrown out of the program is the trait that got him the summer. He would not stop following the thing he was curious about. Following it cost him his place in the camp. Following it also walked him into the Kingston airport with a thumb piano and out of it with a host, a house, and an island to explore.

This is the pattern worth naming for anyone building a next chapter after 50. Curiosity works like a practice. It can be built, kept in shape, and allowed to go slack. Like any practice, it asks something of you. Sometimes it asks you to be the one person in the room who says the rule is wrong. Sometimes it costs you the safe spot. David has been paying that price and collecting that return for sixty years, and at 80 he is still doing it, phone in hand, sorting himself into categories, naming animals so the word never lands on his chart.

The thumb piano has opened a lot of doors in this series. The one in Kingston may be the clearest. He had lost the program. He sat down and played. The next door opened.

Where we go next

One story has been waiting since the beginning: the woman David met in Tanzania in 1965, a nurse who studied in Ireland and came home speaking Swahili with an Irish accent. We meet again soon. I think it’s time.

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David Thiermann, 80, lives in Santa Cruz, California. He holds a thumb piano, a long memory, and, by his doctor’s count, at least twenty animals’ worth of curiosity. He is, by his own account, an improviser.

Jerry W. Washington, Ed.D., is a Marine Corps veteran of twenty-three years and co-founder of Betweenward, a space for people building what comes next when the old method has stopped working. He also publishes What Time Binds on Substack, where he writes on institutional accountability and public memory. He holds a doctorate in Organizational Change and Leadership from USC Rossier, teaches at UC Irvine’s Division of Continuing Education, and is the author of Adulthood of Humanity (2026).

My husband looked at me one morning last month and said, “You seem like yourself again.”

I had to think about that for a second, because I hadn’t noticed the shift until he brought it to my attention. Somewhere over the previous few weeks, the bracing had eased. I was still watching and adapting, still aware of all the things that had changed since his new diagnosis. But I wasn’t white-knuckling my way through the day anymore. The house felt less like a problem I was managing and more like home again.

That’s the closest I can get to describing Still Water from the inside.

It doesn’t announce itself. There’s no morning when you wake up and think, I’ve arrived. It’s more like one day someone you trust tells you that you seem like yourself, and you realize they’re right, and you feel something loosen a little at the thought.

What Another Drop Taught Me About This One

There was a morning not long ago when I stood in our kitchen and noticed the green oxygen tubing running from the bedroom into the living room. My husband was still sleeping. The house was quiet. And something about seeing that tubing made the weight of what had changed land differently than it had before.

We’ve been on a caregiving road for a while, he and I. New diagnoses layered on older ones, new equipment, new routines built around a body that keeps asking us to adapt.

I know the Ripple Journey from the inside, not just because I keep living it, but because living it is what gave it a name. This latest Drop set the waves in motion again. There was the internal reckoning, the honest conversations we needed to have, and then the slow reaching out to friends who could sit with me in it without rushing me toward a brighter interpretation.

And then, slowly, the settling.

What I know about transition is that it moves in waves. The Drop hits, the water is disturbed, and what follows isn’t tidy or sequential. And then, eventually, there’s a quieter kind of steadiness on the other side. Urgency softens. The hard thing is still present, but it’s no longer running the whole show.

That settling — not resolution, just the return of breath — is what I’ve been calling Still Water for years. Writing about it as part of a framework is one thing. Living through another Drop and finding my way back to Still Water is another thing entirely.

What I Got Wrong About Still Water When I First Named It

The Ripple Journey didn’t start as a framework. It started as the pattern I kept noticing in my own transitions — and the name came later. When I first described Still Water, I think I imagined it as a destination. The place you get to after all the hard work. And there’s something true in that because it does come after. But calling it a destination implied it would stay, and that’s not quite right.

Still Water is more like a state you return to. Or maybe: a state you practice returning to. Because the waves don’t stop, new ones come. And I’ve had enough Drops by now — professional, relational, health-related, the particular accumulation of things that life hands you after 50 — to understand that what shifts isn’t the disruption. What shifts is the trust that you can find your way back through the waves.

That trust is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived through enough transitions to have earned it. That’s not optimism, exactly. It’s closer to evidence. You’ve come through things before, and you know it now in your body, not just in your head.

The Green Tubing Is Still There

I want to be clear about something, because I don’t want this to read as a tidy ending.

The situation hasn’t resolved. My husband’s health is what it is. The equipment is now part of our home, our routine, and the texture of a day. Some mornings are heavier than others. The grief that lives at the edge of a long caregiving relationship doesn’t disappear because you’ve found your footing again.

What changed is something smaller and more real than resolution. I stopped fighting the weight of it. At some point, I just let it be what it is. It’s hard, and it’s ours, and also full of the ordinary things we love about our life together. His humor came back first. That helped more than I can say.

There’s something about letting yourself stop performing okayness that gives actual okayness room to return. I don’t know how to say that without it sounding more prescriptive than I mean it. I just know that when I stopped trying to carry it gracefully and started carrying it honestly, something shifted.

For Wherever You Are In This

If you’re reading this in the middle of your own long transition — a job that ended, a role that changed, a future that looks different from what you expected — I’m not going to tell you that Still Water is waiting on the other side if you just do the right things. That’s not how it works, and you probably already know that.

What I will say is that the water does calm. And sometimes the first sign is someone who knows you well saying, "You seem like yourself again." Or noticing that you laughed at something without it costing you anything. Or realizing that you made a decision this week without rehearsing all the ways it could go wrong.

Small signs. Easy to miss.

Worth paying attention to.

If something in this article struck a chord and you know someone else who might benefit, please share it.

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María Tomás-Keegan is the co-founder of Betweenward™, a career and leadership coach, award-winning author, and trusted guide for women moving through meaningful change in work and life. Through her coaching, writing, and speaking, she helps women reconnect with who they are now, trust the wisdom they’ve earned, and lead forward with clarity, courage, and alignment. She created The Ripple Journey™, a framework for work and life transformation. She writes from the steady practice of learning to live honestly again amid what has changed.

Join us in the Betweenward™ Community.

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