“Nobody feels ready. Ready isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision.”
For a long time, I wrote a lot for clients — copywriting, marketing, SEO… Here, I’m writing as Sónia. Not the translator, not the copywriter. Just the person.
There’s a quote by C. S. Lewis that I’ve always liked: “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
I don’t always agree with the idea of “destiny”, but I like what lies behind it: often, we only understand the meaning of change once we’re much further down the road.
We like to believe that one day we’ll wake up feeling brave. That confidence will arrive overnight, certainty will finally outweigh doubt, and we’ll somehow know when it’s the right time, no hesitation.
But it almost never happens that way. Most of us spend our lives waiting for fear to disappear before we take the first step. The problem is that fear was never planning to go anywhere, it was only waiting to see whether we’d go ahead anyway.
The strange thing about change is that we don’t usually fear what’s coming, we fear what we are forced to let go of.
Whether it’s the identity we’ve built, the routines that shape our days, or the people who have walked beside us for years… Even unhappiness can become strangely comfortable when we’ve lived with it long enough. The familiar has a remarkable way of disguising itself as safety.
Our minds prefer predictable discomfort to uncertain possibility. It’s an ancient human instinct.
For thousands of years, uncertainty could mean danger. Today, uncertainty might simply mean a new career, a different city, ending one relationship, beginning another, or allowing ourselves to become someone we’ve never been before. Our brains can’t always tell the difference. They simply recognise that the “map” is gone — and having a map is what makes us feel safe.
I know this because, not long ago, I found myself standing at the edge of a completely unfamiliar landscape.
For a quarter of a century, I worked alongside someone who had become much more than a business partner. Fifteen of those years were spent building Verbarium—a company that wasn’t just a workplace, but a part of our identity. Every project, every client, every achievement carried the reassuring rhythm of familiarity and safety.
Then, almost overnight, everything changed. My colleague, who was also the company’s CEO, no longer felt happy doing what we were doing. She needed a fresh start, she told us. And suddenly I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet. I was overwhelmed by fear. For months, I worried and hoped she would find satisfaction in her work again, and that somehow things would go back to the way they had always been. But, inside, I already knew nothing would be the same again.
Then, one day, I opened my email to start my workday, a day like every other day for over two decades, and found a question addressed to me and my other colleague: Would you both consider taking on the company?
The structure I had relied on disappeared. The certainty I’d taken for granted vanished.
We decided to carry on as freelancers, because that would make it easier to navigate the challenges of the post-AI translation market. But we would buy the brand we had helped create and grow, along with the website and social media presence, and continue together as independent professionals under the same name.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t afraid. We were both terrified. Suddenly, I had to redefine not only my work, but also who I was professionally. There were moments when the unknown felt overwhelming. Moments when I wondered whether starting over in my fifties was an act of bravery… or madness.
Fear has a way of asking very convincing questions. What if this doesn’t work? What if I’ve already lived my best chapter? What if it’s too late to start over?
The thing is… fear rarely asks the questions that really matter.
What if this becomes the beginning of something better?
What if what you’re losing is simply making room for what you’re about to build?
As the weeks passed, something unexpected happened. Working side by side with Eliane in a completely new way allowed us to discover strengths in each other that had always been there, quietly waiting for the right moment.
And as we put more of ourselves into this, we realised we weren’t trying to recreate the past. We didn’t want to. We were creating something different: something ours.
Our skills complemented each other naturally. Where one of us hesitated, the other found confidence. Where one focused on precision, the other brought creativity. The balance wasn’t planned—it emerged.
Little by little, Verbarium began to breathe again. Not as the company it had once been, but as something reborn and renewed. Verbarium had been a good place to work, it had been a successful company.
But we decided to start again in our own voice. We needed to shift our focus and adapt to the times in which we are living.
So, we refreshed the website, our social media posts and our newsletter, and slowly but surely, we brought Verbarium back to life with a new energy. Lighter, more authentic, and closer to people. Personal rather than corporate.
With a fresh image, a new voice, and a partnership built not on habit, but on mutual trust and shared purpose.
Looking back, I realise I wasn’t mourning only a business. I was mourning a version of myself.
And perhaps that’s what many of us misunderstand about change. Sometimes we don’t need to replace our old life. We need to allow ourselves to outgrow it.
Life has asked me to change in more ways than one. Some changes came gradually and quietly; others arrived like a blast, without warning. Some were deeply personal, touching the people I love, my health, my sense of security, and the plans I thought were fixed forever.
None of them were changes I would have chosen. Yet each one, in its own way, gently insisted on teaching me the same lesson: nothing truly alive ever remains unchanged.
Perhaps that’s why the ocean has always fascinated me. Standing at the edge, you can only see the surface. Beneath it is a world of deep mystery. It’s frightening, but immensely beautiful.
You don’t know where every path leads, and you don’t know what you’ll find. Yet nobody expects to see the entire journey before taking the first step.
Life asks us for that same kind of trust. Not certainty, just the courage to keep moving.
The strange thing is, every meaningful chapter of our lives once felt frightening.
The first day at school.
The first job.
The first home.
The first love.
The first heartbreak.
The first goodbye that changed us forever.
And yet, when we look back, those moments no longer feel frightening. They simply became part of us.
Fear has a funny way of working. It makes every unopened door look bigger and scarier than it really is, then we walk through it, and suddenly it’s just another room.
Maybe courage was never about feeling fearless, but simply about not letting fear choose for us. There’s a difference between staying where we are because it feels safer and taking the risk of building a life that might one day surprise us.
It isn’t intelligence, or luck, and it isn’t even confidence. It’s being willing to step into a future that hasn’t revealed itself yet.
None of us knows what tomorrow will bring and maybe that uncertainty isn’t something wrong with life, but rather one of the best things about it.
If we already knew every joy, friendship, opportunity, and every version of ourselves waiting ahead, there would be nothing left to discover. No wonder, no becoming. Perhaps that’s why life only ever shows us the next step. Not because it wants to test us, but because it asks us to trust ourselves.
One day, you’ll look back at the person who hesitated for so long, and you’ll look at them with tenderness, because you’ll understand something they couldn’t possibly have known then: that the life they were so afraid to begin became the life they couldn’t imagine living without. And maybe you’ll realise that change didn’t come to erase your story, but to give you a chapter you would never have dared to write for yourself.
It would be easy to say, “Verbarium continues.” But it doesn’t. And I think that’s a good thing.
The old Verbarium belongs to an important chapter in the lives of two professionals, two women, two mothers. The new Verbarium isn’t a copy of what came before, when there were three of us. It’s an evolution, taken forward by two people who already know each other, but who have come to know each other in a deeper way. Two people who have learned to work differently, and discovered that their differences can be a strength.
This is a story of renewal, not nostalgia. Like most things in life. So, when change comes knocking at your door, don’t be afraid, take a chance!
Read more on the subject:
https://www.calm.com/blog/fear-of-change
https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/mental-wellbeing-tips/how-to-deal-with-change/
On that note, take a chance on us, get to know our team of two experienced professionals. We are enough!
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