121. Feeling Behind in Life? It’s Not Too Late — What to Do With the Years You Can’t Get Back

Holly Toscanini: When sleeping women wake, mountains move." It's one of my favorite quotes because something happens when women start to wake up and move. After the witnessing, the attuning, initiating, after all the work of naming the patterns and interrupting the loop ⁓ taking the first imperfect, honest actions, something unexpected shows up alongside all that momentum. Grief. Not dramatic grief. Not the kind that stops you in your tracks, the quieter kind. The particular ache of looking back at the years you've spent waiting and feeling the the heaviness of how long it took you to get where you are today. The years spent hating your body before you understood it had nothing to do with your worth. Or the years you spent people pleasing, just working your way through relationships like that that cost you something essential. Or the years you spent in the research loop or behind the someday cycle or preparing for a start that just never arrived. The years that passed while you were being responsible and practical and managing the lives of everybody around you and just filing your own desires under later. That grief is real and it deserves to be named. Not rushed past, not fixed with a cheerful, it's never too late. it's never too late, that's true, but that often lands as dismissal rather than comfort, ⁓ if the years you spent waiting are just a minor administrative detail on the way to the good part. But they're not a minor detail. Those years mattered. And today we're going to give them their proper value and then decide what you want to do from here. back to How to Lose the WAIT. I'm Holly Toscanini, and we have finally arrived at the trust phase, which is the final phase of the WAIT Framework Series. ⁓ we have witnessed the patterns. We've attuned to the signal. We've initiated the moves. ⁓ now we're going to do the deepest part of the work: building the identity of a woman who keeps her word to herself. The trust phase has two episodes today and next week, which is episode 122. Now, today's episode is about time, specifically the grief that surfaces when you finally start to move and realize how long you've been waiting. I think it's the most tender episode in the whole series, and I want to treat it that way. Because the condition this episode is removing is one of the most final sounding in the entire conditional living loop series. It's too late. I've waited too long, or I missed my window. That condition is not a fact, it's a feeling. And today we're going to use what you know about signals versus spirals to examine it clearly, and then I'm going to introduce you to a concept that's going to carry us into next week evidence over emotion. Because the way out of the grief as a stall is not to feel better about the past, it's to build undeniable proof in the present. The grief is real and it deserves to be named. Now, I want to start here because it it matters, and it's the grief isn't a problem that needs to be fixed. It's not evidence that something has gone wrong with you, and it's certainly not a sign that you're stuck or soft or weak or that you haven't done enough personal development. The grief that comes from waking up with finally seeing the patterns and starting to take action to change them. Is one of the most honest emotional responses a woman can have because it means you understand what the waiting costs you. And that understanding isn't something you you want to rush past. In fact, it's part of what makes the whole movement real. So let me name some of what might be in that grief, because naming it is what gives you your power over it. There's the grief of years spent in the body as enemy relationship. You know, the mornings that you lost to self criticism before you even got out of bed, or the events you didn't go to, or the clothes you didn't wear, or the photos you avoided, the experiences you deferred until you felt your body was somehow better. That's a real cost, and it counts. And I think it's one that almost every woman can identify with. And then there's the grief of the years you spend in roles that just no longer fit. Roles like being the dependable one or the easygoing one or the strong one, performing a version of yourself that was built for somebody else's comfort and safety and calling it your own identity. And then there's the grief of the desires that just kind of got silent. The things you wanted that got negotiated down over years of telling yourself that they were impractical or selfish or too much or too late. Not because you stopped wanting these things. But because you stopped letting yourself feel that you deserved them. And then there's the specific grief of the years you spent in that waiting pattern itself. You know, we've talked about them over the last few weeks: the research loops, the someday cycles, the fear with a planner, the just find traps. The years that had a slightly different quality than they really needed to. They were more flat, they were more managed and less alive. Because you were waiting for permission that was never going to arrive from the outside. There was never anybody that was going to give you the permission you needed to take for yourself. All of that is real. And if you feel the weight or the heaviness of it, that weight's appropriate. You're not being dramatic. You're being accurate. The question isn't whether the grief is real. The question is what do you do next? Because grief, a lot like anxiety, Can serve two very different functions. It can be a signal, which is honest and clarifying and pointing towards something that's true for you, or it could become a spiral, which is looping and catastrophizing and ultimately generating another condition. I waited too long. So there's just no point in starting now. That distinction is where this episode lives, and that's the work we're going to be doing today. So I want you to consider the words behind versus the word overdoe. Because that reframe can change absolutely everything. What if I said, I'm not behind, I'm just overdue? These two words describe pretty much the same circumstance. Time has passed, and things still haven't happened. But they carry very different meanings about what that circumstance implies about you. Behind means you've missed something. Behind implies a race you were supposed to be winning, and you're not. It implies that there was a correct timeline, a specific sequence of events, and somehow you fell off of it. And that the gap between where you are and where you should be is evidence of your failure. Behind is a verdict. It says the window is closed and you didn't get through it in time. Overdue is entirely different because overdue means the thing is still there. It's still waiting. Waiting for you for the right conditions for you to stop negotiating against yourself long enough to just let it happen. Overdue says this was always yours. It hasn't expired. It has been sitting in the queue, patient and persistent, waiting for the version of you who was ready to stop waiting. So you're not behind. You're just overdue. This reframe isn't a consolation. It's not a spiritual bypass. It's a precise and accurate description of what is actually, factually true. The desire you've been deferring has not disappeared. And the version of yourself that you've been almost becoming is still available. The change you've been sort of circling is still there to be made. None of that expired when you were in the research loop or behind behind the the someday cycle or performing the role that just no longer fit. Maybe it got more urgent. Maybe it got a little more insistent but it never closed. Now here's what I want to use The signals versus spiral filter for because this is exactly where it becomes essential. That grief you feel about the years that passed. Is it a signal or is it a spiral? A signal version of this grief says, I spent years waiting because I was trained to. And now I understand what that cost. And now I'm ready to stop. That grief is clear, it's directional and it and it moves towards something. It honors what was lost without turning that lost into a reason to lose more. That grief, when you sit with it, eventually becomes fuel. The spiral version of this grief says, I waited too long, so that opportunity's gone. There's just no point. I've already failed at that chapter of my life, so I might as well just stay right where I am. I've given up. That grief loops. It generates more evidence of inadequacy rather than clarity about your next steps. It turns that loss into a new condition. I can't because I can't begin because I should have begun sooner. That was a lot to say, but you get what I mean. The spiral version is not grief. It's the conditional living loop in a very effective disguise. And when you catch yourself in the spiral version, when I'm behind becomes the reason not to move, run it through this filter. Is this thought repeating or is it clarifying? Is it moving me toward truth or toward control? Is it asking for one honest step or is it demanding a guarantee that that time was not wasted? If it's looping and demanding, it's a spiral. It's the old pattern trying to reinstate itself. It's just fear showing up in the disguise of grief. And the response to that isn't to argue with the feeling. It's to make a move, it's to take an action, one small overdue move, honest, that proves the window is not closed. So what are we supposed to do with the years we can't get back? Here's the honest piece, because I don't want to pretend the reframe does all the work. You cannot get those years back. That's true. The experiences you deferred, the version of yourself you delayed becoming, the desires you let go quiet. Some of that was possible in the years. It's just not possible in the same way now. And pretending otherwise really doesn't serve you. So let's not do that. What I wanna say about this is that the years you spent waiting were absolutely not wasted. They were the years you were doing the best you could with the tools you had and the awareness you had and the support you had. The waiting pattern didn't run because you didn't want it enough. It ran because it was serving a function. It was just keeping you safe. It was keeping things in your life running smoothly and keeping you from the specific risks that maybe felt just Too high at the time. That's worth acknowledging because before you close the file in all those years, I don't want you to excuse the pattern, but I do want you to stop making the waiting mean something about your worth. You were not failing at life. You were living under options and conditions that maybe you didn't get to choose. But now you have the power to choose differently. So what are you gonna do with the years you can't get back? Well, you don't really need to make peace with them completely. You don't need to arrive at a place or a s of this sort of serene acceptance before you're allowed to move. That grief doesn't have to resolve before taking some kind of action is possible. What you need is just a different relationship to the evidence. And this is where I want to introduce something that we're going to go into a little deeper next week: evidence over emotion. See, your inner critic right now is looking at the years that passed and building this case. This case sounds like See, you don't follow through. You start things and don't finish them. You've been talking about this for years and nothing's changed. This proves that you just can't trust yourself. That case is built on emotion, specifically on the feeling of having fallen short somehow. And feelings, as we've established throughout this series, are just not data. Evidence is data. Evidence what you've done ⁓ the last 12 weeks, the last 12 months. ⁓ weeks we've been listening to this entire podcast. The patterns you've named, the signals you have distinguished from spirals, you've done it. The rest you took before you earned it, the condition you identified, and the micro pivots you've been taking, the courageous actions that you made before you felt ready, the evidence you wrote down after you took that action. All of those things we've been talking about are the receipts, the real ones, and they belong to you as much as the years of waiting do. Now Your inner critic is going to argue with the years you waited. Of course it is. It's got a much harder time arguing with what you've done since then. That's the shift. Not from grief to happiness, from the evidence of the past to the evidence of right now. And right now, you're a woman who has been doing the work, who has seen the patterns and named them, who's taken imperfect, honest action in spite of being afraid. Someone who's kept small promises to herself and noticed what happened. When she did. That woman is not behind. She's overdue. And she is taking action. So here's what I would really love for you to hold on to from today. The grief you've experienced is real. The years you spent waiting mattered. And the cost of them deserves to be acknowledged rather than kind of papered over. You're allowed to feel the weight of all of that without meaning you failed. You're not behind. You, my friend, are overdue. The woman you've been waiting to become is still in there. The desires you filed under later are still there. The window you thought you missed was never as narrow as the conditional living loop convinced you that it was. What the spiral version of this grief wants is for the past to become a new condition. I'll start when I've forgiven myself for waiting too long. Don't let it. That is just the loop rebranding. You can grieve at the time and move at the same time. Those two are not mutually exclusive. So your practice this week is to write down thing you've been telling yourself you missed the window on, something you've been carrying in the too late category. Ask yourself honestly, is that true? Is the window closed, or have you been accepting the inner critic's closing time as an fact? And then, if you find the window is still open, which I suspect you will, ⁓ one move. Not a plan to make up for time. Not a plan, a move, one honest action that treats the desire as current rather than expired. And as you do that work, I'm going to offer you two new resources. The first is the Unwaiting Map. And it's a 90-day tool for exactly this phase of the work. When you've done the witnessing and the attuning and the initiating and you're ready to consolidate it into a real plan for your next chapter, the Unwaiting Map is that container. It moves you from pattern recognition into a lived experience of being able to follow through and see the results of that. can find it in the show notes and in the description below the video. ⁓ the second resource is the wait list for the Unwaiting method. This an eight-week group coaching program that I'm going to be opening in September of 2026. ⁓ If been listening to this series and thinking, I want to do this work in a real container with and support and someone to walk through it with me, this is that. The founding round is going to be intimate, so I'm not going to have openings for quite as many people, but you're going to have direct access to me, and anybody on the wait list is going to hear about it first. Both of the links are in the show notes. Now, next week is episode 122, the final episode of the WAIT Framework series. ⁓ it's called Evidence Over Emotion. Self-Trust is just a track record, people, because here's what I want you to sit with between now and next week. Self-trust isn't a feeling that shows up when all the conditions are perfect. It's a track record you build. It's one kept promise, one piece of evidence that you took action and survived. One overdue move at a time. Your inner critic argues with how you feel about yourself all the time. It's got a much harder time arguing with that work when you prove you've actually done it. So next week we're gonna build the case. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.