Change the Door
This morning, I stepped onto the field in daylight.
And it felt… different.
Not just brighter.
Not just clearer.
It felt like I had entered through a completely different door.
Same field.
Same trees.
Same path I’ve walked hundreds of times before in the dark.
But everything about the experience had changed.
A few days ago, I had promised the trees—the elders—that I would come back and see them in the light.
I wanted to check on the younger ones.
The toddler trees that were planted a couple of years ago.
Last summer was hot. Dry. Relentless.
I carried bottles of water out to them almost every day, just hoping to help them survive.
And today… some of them are still struggling.
But many are blooming.
The evergreens are full. Lush. Alive.
And standing there, taking it all in, I realized something I’ve tried to explain before—but never quite found the words for.
Sometimes, it’s not the place that needs to change.
It’s the way we enter it.
There have been moments in my life when I knew something needed to shift.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
But deeply.
When I stopped smoking…
When I stopped drinking…
When I was moving through grief…
I didn’t just remove the habit.
I changed the door.
When I quit smoking, I didn’t sit in the same chair with my morning coffee and just “try not to smoke.”
I didn’t white-knuckle my way through the same routine.
I changed everything around it.
I didn’t have coffee at home—I waited until I got to work.
I didn’t drive the same route—I took a different road.
I didn’t walk in the same door—I used another entrance.
Tiny shifts.
But they mattered.
Because those small changes were quietly saying:
I am not who I used to be.
It wasn’t easy.
But it worked.
That was 27 years ago.
And I did the same thing when I chose not to drink.
I didn’t have language for it back then.
Now I can see it more clearly:
I wasn’t just breaking a habit.
I was breaking the pattern that kept calling that habit forward.
The habit wasn’t the problem.
It was the signal.
And the pattern was the system that kept answering it the same way.
I’ve felt this in grief, too.
When my sweet Shih Tzu Daisy died… I was devastated.
She had been with me through everything—through an abusive relationship, through my decision to stop drinking, through the rebuilding of my life.
She was my constant.
And when she was gone, I could feel how easily I could keep reopening that wound just by moving through my days the same way I always had.
The same routines.
The same moments.
The same expectations.
Touching the same spaces where she used to be.
And I realized something that felt almost counterintuitive:
If I kept touching the wound, it couldn’t close.
Not because remembering is wrong.
Not because love fades.
But because repetition can keep something active long after it needs space to breathe.
I’ve used that phrase before—stop touching the wound.
And maybe what I mean now is this:
Give it space.
Let it settle.
Let something new form around it.
This isn’t just about smoking.
Or drinking.
Or grief.
It’s about patterns.
I’ve worked with women who say:
“I love my life… I just don’t want to drink so much.”
And I understand that.
I see this in women all the time—
lives that look good on paper…
but feel flat on the inside.
But here’s what I’ve come to see:
You might not need a completely different life.
But you may need a different way of being inside the one you have.
Not because you’re doing anything wrong.
But because your life is made up of signals.
Your environment…
Your timing…
Your routines…
They all quietly reinforce who you are being.
So when something no longer fits—
when a pattern starts to feel heavy, numbing, or disconnected—
it’s not always enough to remove the behavior.
Because if everything else stays the same…
the pull will still be there.
So instead of asking:
“How do I stop this?”
What if we asked:
“What would feel different?”
“What would open a new door?”
Not a complete overhaul.
Just one small shift.
A different walk.
A different time.
A different way of entering your day.
Because something interesting happens when you do that.
You begin to experience your life… differently.
And when your experience changes—
your identity starts to shift with it.
Not forced.
Not declared.
Just… lived.
And yes, sometimes people will notice.
Sometimes they’ll say:
“You’ve changed.”
And they might not mean it as a compliment.
Because your change can rub up against a version of you that worked for them.
But change isn’t the problem.
It’s part of being alive.
And when something begins to feel different…
it often begins to feel more alive.
I look at those trees now…
Some thriving.
Some still finding their way.
And I think—
They didn’t bloom by staying exactly as they were.
They responded to the conditions around them.
The light.
The water.
The space.
We’re not so different.
Sometimes, we don’t need to leave our life.
We just need to enter it… differently.
With a little more awareness.
A little more intention.
And a willingness to see what might feel alive again.
🌙
If this sounds intriguing to you…Come sit with me… and let’s explore what might open a new door.
—Teresa
