I’ve been thinking a lot this week about certainty—how often we’re taught to treat it as the responsible choice.

Certainty looks like commitment.
Like maturity.
Like staying the course.

But I’ve learned (slowly, and not without resistance) that certainty can also be a way of staying with a story that no longer fits.

For a long time, I believed that if I could just know—know the outcome, know the ending, know I wouldn’t regret the choice—then I’d be allowed to move.

What I see now is that certainty kept me static far longer than uncertainty ever did.

Motion didn’t give me answers.
It didn’t resolve the tension.
It didn’t make the path obvious.

What it gave me was momentum—small, imperfect, honest movement that changed the story simply by continuing it.

As a writer, this feels especially true.

Stories don’t unfold because the characters are certain.
They unfold because something becomes too costly to endure unchanged.

Staying put has a price.
So does moving.

This week, I’m choosing to pay attention to which cost feels truer.

— Michelle