Everyone Trusted Me to Figure It Out. Why Couldn’t I Trust Myself?

I became a mom at 19.

I didn’t have years to sit around figuring out who I was before life asked me to be responsible for someone else. I had a child to raise. By 23, I had two.

I loved being their mom. I still do. But those early years taught me to pay close attention to what could go wrong. When money was tight, a decision wasn’t just a decision. You had to think about what it would cost, what might happen next, and whether you could handle it if things didn’t work out.

I got married, got divorced and kept figuring out what came next while I struggled to raise my kids on my own. I made a lot of decisions in those years. Some worked. Some absolutely did not. Either way, life didn’t pause so I could feel ready.

You’d think that would make me trust myself without question.

It didn’t.

I learned how to handle things, but I also learned how to run through every possible outcome before making a move. I could spot a problem from a mile away. I could prepare for the worst. I could replay a conversation and find the one sentence I should have said differently. That skill helped me survive some hard years. It could also make an ordinary choice feel like a court case inside my own head.

Meanwhile, I became the person other people came to when they needed help deciding what to do.

I built a business as a virtual assistant and online business manager, helping other people bring order to their ideas and businesses. I built a career in corporate, moving from customer service into leadership, business development, and process improvement. My work was full of decisions. I could walk into a mess, find the real problem, weigh the options, and help people move forward.

Then I’d get home and question a choice I’d already made three times.

That’s the strange thing about overthinking. You can be smart, capable, and experienced and still have a hard time trusting yourself when the decision is yours.

I didn’t always recognize that as overthinking. Sometimes I called it being mindful or attentive. Sometimes I called it doing my research. Sometimes I told myself I just needed a little more time. And sometimes I really did need more information.

But there were plenty of times when I already knew enough. I was looking for a way to make a decision without feeling the discomfort of possibly getting it wrong.

At 44, my kids moved out, and the question got louder.

For most of my adult life, being Mom had given my days a shape. Even as my kids grew up, there was always someone to consider when I made plans. Then the house got quiet. I had more freedom than I’d had in years.

I could do what I wanted.

What the hell did I want? What TF does that even mean? What does that look like being an empty nester?

I’d spent so much time responding to what life needed from me that choosing what I wanted felt harder than I expected. I could imagine several versions of what came next. I could make a case for each one. I could also talk myself out of every single one.

That’s when I started paying closer attention to the gap between knowing I could handle life and trusting myself to choose my own life.

They aren’t always the same thing.

I didn’t wake up one morning cured of overthinking. I still catch myself trying to get a guarantee before I make a move. I still have moments when I want someone else to tell me which choice is right.

What changed was that I began to question the habit instead of obeying it.

Do I actually need more information? Or am I hoping for certainty nobody can give me?

Am I listening to my own judgment? Or asking five people because I’m scared to stand by it?

What’s one small decision I can roll the dice on and make today?

Those questions led me to start writing.

I wrote about the things I was living through: the quiet after my kids left, the choices I’d made in business, the times I’d second-guessed myself, and the moments I’d moved forward without knowing how everything would turn out. The more I wrote, the more I noticed how often women were carrying the same questions.

What if I pick wrong?

What will everyone think?

How do I know I can trust myself?

I wanted a place to talk about those questions honestly. That became Letters from Ness. And it became the centre of what I’m building under my own name.

I write for the woman who can make a decision for everyone else, then lies awake picking apart her own. The woman with twenty tabs open, three people’s opinions in her head, and a gut feeling she keeps trying to argue with.

I’m not here to tell her every choice will work out. Some of mine haven’t. I’m here because I’ve learned that getting something wrong doesn’t mean you can’t trust yourself. You can make a choice, learn from it, and decide what to do next.

For a long time, I thought self-trust would arrive before the decision. That I’d finally feel certain, and then I’d move.

These days, I think it grows when I make a choice I can stand behind, keep one tiny promise to myself, and see that I’m capable of handling what comes next.

That’s how this started.

I spent years learning how to figure things out for everyone else. Now I’m learning to give my own judgment a seat at the table.

If you’re tired of thinking yourself in circles, come sit with me. We’ll tell the truth, make the damn decision, and see where it takes us.

See you in the wash,

Ness