Change, It’s a word many people fear, yet it’s also the thing that brings the greatest growth in our lives. For me, change came in many forms: leaving an organization I had invested years in, navigating through personal struggles, and reinventing myself in the face of loss. Each time, I feared the unknown, but I also realized that fear was just a natural part of the process. The real question is: how do we respond to it?

At first, change feels unsettling. The familiar is comforting, even if it’s not always in our best interest. But the more I learned to embrace it, the more I understood that it is often through change that we uncover new parts of ourselves. Leaving Scientology was one of the hardest decisions I ever made, but it ultimately freed me to explore who I truly was outside of those walls.

Change is often a door that opens to a better life, even if we can’t see it at the time. The key is to trust yourself enough to take that first step. You don’t have to know the whole journey in advance — all you need is the courage to move forward, and the rest will follow.