The Long Knowing

When you already know, but you just aren’t ready yet

There’s a certain kind of knowing that doesn’t announce itself.

It doesn’t arrive with drama or clarity or a defined next step. It just settles into you — slowly, uncomfortably — like a stone dropping to the bottom of still water.

It tightens in your stomach when you awaken in the night.

I am all too familiar with that kind of knowing. I’ve lived inside it for years at a time.

A few months after turning 50, while on a long drive home from a family holiday vacation, I turned to my husband.

“You know how we always talked about renting out the house for a year once the kids were grown and living abroad?” I said. “Looks like it’s time to plan that!”

Our youngest was a sophomore in college - after TWO years as a freshman (don’t ask!). I’d been feeling a restlessness—like a horse pawing the ground ready to get out of the barn—for a few years now. I wanted to explore, experience, spend a good long time checking out a different culture.

My husband stared straight ahead at the road twisting before us.

He shrugged, “I just think it’s way too complicated to set that up now,” he replied. “Besides, I’m happy with our life as it is. At home. I like taking vacations - but not living somewhere else.”

I felt something sink—deep in my chest—and I turned to look out the window. I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the disappointment sweeping through my body.

No point in arguing. I’d learned by now that it would go nowhere. I’d held onto this dream, this desire, for so many years now. A little comfort stone through all the chaos of the years of raising kids and running a retail business.

The knowing got louder in that moment. It had been swirling in the background for months, maybe even years. Yet I wasn’t ready to name it out loud.

That’s the thing about the Long Knowing. It doesn’t ask for your permission. It’s just there. And it waits.

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This wasn’t the first time I’d lived here.

Long ago, I’d built something I loved from almost nothing. An herb shop, started on a shoestring as a single mom in my early 20s. A business I grew over nineteen years into a beloved community icon. The shop wasn’t just my livelihood, it was like my third baby. My entire identity was wrapped up in that store and my role as owner.

I worked long hours, but the work was fun, the growth exciting. And the community that formed around it was so validating.

And then, slowly something shifted. Part of it external—the herbs and other unique items we were known for became more widely available. Business growth slowed. I was told I needed to cut payroll, reduce inventory. I wanted none of that.

Part of the shift was internal, I was in my early 40s by now and I wanted more time to actually be with myself—to utilize the wonderful tools that I sold in the shop. Follow through on all the spiritual advice those books offered.

I knew. Some part of me had known for a long time. It was time to move on.

But I resisted. What could I possibly do instead?

And then one night, a fire erupted in a trash can and began to spread. Spontaneous combustion the experts concluded later.

An employee working late grabbed a fire extinguisher and saved the building — but the smoke destroyed the inventory.

In the following days I faced a choice: keep the store open - or take the insurance money and go.

The universe had basically handed me an exit, wrapped in ash and smoke.

Instead I doubled down. I restocked. I kept going. I even borrowed money to invest in a Point of Sale computer system.

I told myself the fact that we didn’t burn down was a sign I was supposed to stay and keep the store going. It was meant to be.

It wasn’t. But I wasn’t ready to know that yet either.

It took another year to finally listen to the Knowing. I decided to sell the shop.

By the time I finally found a buyer, many months later, I felt something I hadn’t expected.

Relief.

Not grief, not failure — freedom. Freedom to finally do the things I’d been postponing for nearly two decades. The writing that had always called to me. The opportunity to return to college. The becoming.

The Long Knowing had been right all along. I’d just needed time to catch up to it.

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So there I was, years later, in that car, feeling that same familiar uncomfortable Knowing.

And I still didn’t move. Not yet.

I argued with the Knowing. How could it be right? This was a comfortable life.

You see, the Knowing doesn’t show you a path. It just arrives as a feeling in your gut.

Nobody talks about this part — how long the Long Knowing can go on before you actually do anything about it.

There’s a voice (in your heart) that knows, and then there are all the other voices (in your head). The ones that say you’re lucky, it could be so much worse. The ones that catalog everything good about the life you’ve built. The ones that ask who you think you are to want more than this.

I listened to those head voices for a long time.

I was very, very good at getting lost in the voices in my head.

To avoid the voices I did what I’d always done—I filled my days with activity. Bookkeeping work, the gym, researching and writing my two blogs a week. In the evenings I’d bury myself in the computer while my husband played pool with his friends.

I honed my skills at not looking too directly at the discomfort.

But the Knowing didn’t go anywhere. It remained like a low hum in the background — the way a car alarm gets harder to ignore the longer you try not to hear it.

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Several months after that car ride, came the download.

I’d treated myself to a solitary 2-day retreat in the mountains, and it came in like a thunder clap while I hiked through an ancient forest. I dropped to my knees in awe, realizing that the time of avoiding the Knowing was over.

Suddenly, with a clarity I hadn’t felt in years, I knew: I would move—but not down to the Bay Area as I’d sometimes thought, but to Portland, Oregon.

Most people thought it was a crazy idea.

It didn’t come with a plan or a job offer or a sensible reason. It came the way real Knowing sometimes does — not through the front door of logic, but through a softer interior channel.

I packed what I could fit into my little Nissan Altima and headed north.

I hadn’t even gone 50 miles when I felt the shackles coming off.

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I’m not telling you this because I think you should leave your marriage, or sell your business, or quit your job and pack a car and drive somewhere without a plan.

I’m telling you this because you might be in the Long Knowing right now. About something.

Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s a career, a city, a version of yourself you’ve been living for so long you’ve lost touch with the Self you once knew. Maybe it’s simply a persistent, uncomfortable sense that something needs to change, and you’re not ready to look at it directly yet.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize: The length of the Long Knowing isn’t a flaw. It’s not weakness, or denial, or being slow.

It’s simply being a human. It’s the time the psyche needs to prepare for the size of what’s coming. The grief of it. The loss. The terrifying freedom on the other side.

The question I want to leave you with is not why has it taken you so long.

It’s this: what do you already know?

You don’t have to do anything with it today. You don’t have to make a move or blow anything up or have a plan.

Just be willing to know it.

The rest has a way of following.

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I’m a life and wellness coach who has been working with women at midlife and beyond for 14 years — and living through everything I write about. If this resonated, subscribe for more essays on reinvention, healthy aging, and the slow work of learning to trust yourself.

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