How to Deal with Loneliness During Major Life Transitions
Have you met anyone who said 2025 was their year?
No. Exactly.
I haven’t met a single person who didn’t describe it as intense, confronting, or nothing like they expected. For most people I know, it wasn’t about happiness or big-ass milestones. It was about simply getting through.
And honestly, the years leading up to 2025 were already heavy for me. Setback after setback. I hoped this year would finally bring some relief. Instead, it became the climax of everything that had been building for years.
I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing it because it’s simply the reality.
And because I know deeply what it feels like to move through major life transitions while feeling profoundly alone.
If you’re navigating a similar in-between space, this is for you.
Redefining loneliness
Loneliness is still treated like a dirty word. As if feeling lonely automatically means you don’t have enough friends, that you’re socially failing, or that something must be wrong with you. So we learn to hide it. We curate online lives that look full, connected, and perfectly fine.
But loneliness has very little to do with how many people you have around you.
You can feel deeply lonely while being surrounded by supportive friends, loving family, and people who genuinely care.
Because in the end, you are the one who has to live with the consequences of your choices. You are the one who has to make the hard decisions, sit with the uncertainty, pick yourself back up, and keep moving forward.
Support can soften the edges, but it can’t carry the weight for you. And that’s where this particular kind of loneliness lives.
Alone vs lonely & life transitions
There’s an important difference between being alone and feeling lonely.
Being alone is a circumstance. Feeling lonely is existential. It shows up when an old version of your life no longer fits, but the next one hasn’t fully formed yet.
Major life transitions create this gap. Identities fall away. Structures you once relied on dissolve. The familiar reference points disappear, and suddenly there’s no clear script to follow. No one can tell you exactly what to do, which path to take, or how this will turn out.
This is often the moment when loneliness intensifies. Not because you lack connection, but because no one can walk this part of the path for you. And for people who are used to being capable, responsible, and self-directed, that reality can feel confronting in a way few people talk about.
Loneliness shows up when an old version of your life no longer fits, but the next one hasn’t fully formed yet.
When Nearly Everything Falls Away, More Than Once
In my early thirties, within the span of just three months, I lost or consciously ended nearly everything I had built my life around. A long-term relationship. My home. My business. Key friendships.
About ninety-nine percent of where my time, energy, and identity had been invested disappeared shortly before my thirtieth birthday.
And in 2025, at the age of thirty-seven, I found myself in another full-scale transition. On the surface, life seemed to happen to me; setback after setback, accumulating to a point where “just cry and move on” was no longer a sustainable response.
At the same time, I made deliberate choices. I could feel that the life I was living was no longer aligned with my potential.
So I closed a business I had poured five years of my life into. I let go of friendships that no longer matched who I was becoming. And in December I left Bali after six years and moved back to the Netherlands, to rebuild a life in Europe that truly reflects my capacity, rather than staying comfortable in something that had quietly become too small.
I’m sharing this not to dramatise loss, but to be precise about context.
When I speak about loneliness during life transitions, I’m not speaking theoretically. I’m speaking from repeated, lived experience.
I left Bali after six years and moved back to the Netherlands, to rebuild a life in Europe that truly reflects my capacity, rather than staying comfortable in something that had quietly become too small.
What Loneliness Taught Me About Self-Leadership
When life falls away behind you and you realise you’re standing alone in the middle of it, there are only two directions you can move in.
You can start running in circles. Trying to fix the loneliness. Hoping someone will save you. Looking for reassurance, validation, or an external anchor to lean on.
Or you can stop. Sit still. And be honest with yourself: this is mine to move through. Supported, yes. But not carried.
No one can walk this part of the path for you.
Choosing Self-Leadership Over Escape
I stopped trying to get rid of the feeling of loneliness. I accepted that it was there, and that I could move forward with it.
Not because it was comfortable, but because I knew I was capable. Capable of holding myself steady. Capable of making decisions without external reassurance. Capable of trusting that this experience wasn’t random, but formative.
I didn’t interpret this phase as life being against me.
I began to see it as life protecting me; preventing me from wasting more time on a path that no longer fit, even if the next one wasn’t fully visible yet.
I didn’t need to know the destination. I needed to trust that if something was falling away, it was because something else required space to emerge.
If this article resonates, subscribe for more reflections on
self-leadership, entrepreneurship, and aligned growth.
When Loneliness Becomes an Advantage
Over time, my relationship with loneliness changed. I stopped seeing it as a weakness and began to recognise its strategic advantage.
When you stand alone, you move faster. You become clearer. You make decisions without negotiating your truth. There’s no one you need to explain yourself to, no identity you need to maintain for others.
It becomes just you and your capacity to act in alignment with what you know is right.
That kind of clarity is rare. And most people avoid it because it requires radical self-honesty.
I stopped seeing loneliness as a weakness and began to recognise its strategic advantage.
Meeting Yourself at the Crossroads
Being alone with myself forced a deeper confrontation. If I was the only one who could move myself forward; who was I, really, at this point in my life?
Who had I become at thirty-seven? What identity had I built over the years? Which parts of it still fit, and which parts no longer did?
Instead of staying in a passive, waiting mode, I turned inward with responsibility. Not to overanalyse, but to recalibrate. To decide consciously who I wanted to be next and what needed to change in order to meet that version of myself.
That shift, from waiting to choosing, marked the end of victimhood and the beginning of deliberate movement.
Holding the Full Spectrum of Transition
Moving toward a new future doesn’t cancel out grief for what you’re leaving behind. Both exist at the same time.
There are days filled with momentum and clarity and days where your body lags behind your mind. Fatigue. Heaviness. A hollow feeling you can’t rationalise away.
Humans are wired for stability. And during transitions, stability is often the very thing that disappears. That makes this phase both a blessing and a vulnerability.
Learning to hold the fluctuation — the ups, the downs, and everything in between — is part of the work. Not resisting it. Not romanticising it. Simply allowing it to be part of the process.
Learning to hold the fluctuation — the ups, the downs, and everything in between — is part of the work.
How I Became a Rock for Myself
I realised something essential about loneliness during life transitions: when you truly feel alone, there is only one real answer.
If it feels like you have to do this on your own, then the way through it — and the way out of it — also starts with you.
Not in a self-help sense. Not in a “be strong” way. But in the quiet, confronting recognition that no one else can take responsibility for your inner alignment, your choices, or your direction.
No one else can take responsibility for your inner alignment, your choices, or your direction.
Astrology as a Mirror, Not an Escape
Over the past few years, I immersed myself in astrology. What started as curiosity gradually became serious study. Not because I was looking for answers outside of myself but because it helped me understand myself more clearly.
During major life events, mirrors matter. Mirrors in the form of friends and family who know you and support you, and mirrors in the form of self-knowledge.
Astrology became that mirror for me. Not something to rely on blindly, but something that reflected me back to myself with precision.
Turning Confusion Into Direction
Life’s chaos doesn’t need to be avoided, it needs to be understood. The difficult experiences will happen anyway. The question is whether you move through them confused and reactive, or grounded and oriented.
Astrology helped me translate confusion into context.
It gave meaning where my mind was spiralling. It helped me stay calm when uncertainty was loud. And it allowed me to turn experiences that felt heavy or disorienting into something purposeful; something constructive.
Not by bypassing reality, but by meeting it with awareness.
The difficult experiences will happen anyway. The question is whether you move through them confused and reactive, or grounded and oriented.
Quieting the Inner Noise
We all carry an internal voice that questions us. Are you living the right life? Did you choose the right path, the right partner, the right work? Should you be different by now? Better, further, more certain?
Astrology doesn’t amplify those voices. It quiets them. Not by telling you what to do, but by revealing who you are underneath the noise.
When you understand your natural wiring; how you process, decide, feel, and move through life, the constant self-correction starts to fall away.
Clarity replaces self-doubt. Truth becomes audible again.
Astrology doesn’t tell you what you have to do, it’s just revealing who you are underneath the noise.
Permission to Be Who You Are
Astrology doesn’t tell you who to become. It tells you who you already are.
It reframes what you once thought was “wrong” with you. It gives permission to honour your intuition instead of overriding it. To stop forcing yourself into shapes that were never meant to fit.
At its core, astrology is self-awareness. A direct, efficient route to understanding your nature, your needs, and your rhythm. So you can finally work with yourself instead of against yourself.
If this article resonates, subscribe for more reflections on
self-leadership, entrepreneurship, and aligned growth.
Real Self-Care Requires Self-Knowledge
We talk endlessly about self-care, yet most people don’t actually know who they are or what they need at a fundamental level.
How can you care for yourself if you don’t understand your own design? How can you give yourself what you need if you’ve never learned how you’re wired?
Astrology offered me that clarity, insights and calmness.
And those are exactly the things you crave when life feels unstable, when everything familiar is falling away and you’re being asked to stand firmly in yourself.
We talk endlessly about self-care, yet most people don’t actually know who they are. How can you care for yourself if you don’t understand how you’re wired?
Standing Steady While Everything Shifts
Loneliness during major life transitions isn’t something to be solved or escaped. It’s something to be met. To be held. To be moved through with honesty and self-responsibility.
You don’t overcome this kind of loneliness by filling it with distractions, people, or certainty. You move through it by learning how to stay with yourself when the old life has fallen away and the new one hasn’t fully arrived yet.
For me, astrology became one of the ways to do that. Not as an answer outside of myself, but as a framework for self-understanding. A way to stay oriented when everything external felt unstable. A mirror that helped me recognise who I am, how I’m wired, and what I need, especially when doubt and inner noise were loud.
That’s ultimately how you deal with loneliness during major life transitions:
by strengthening your relationship with yourself, by choosing self-leadership over escape, and by using tools that deepen self-awareness instead of outsourcing your authority.
Loneliness doesn’t mean you’re failing. Often, it means you’re standing at the threshold of a new chapter. One that requires you to meet yourself more fully than ever before.
That’s ultimately how you deal with loneliness during major life transitions:
by strengthening your relationship with yourself, by choosing self-leadership over escape, and by using tools that deepen self-awareness instead of outsourcing your authority.
About the writer
Myrthe Warmenhoven (1988) writes for visionary founders and entrepreneurs who are building what doesn’t exist yet.
Her work explores personal development, self-leadership, and business through an honest, grounded lens; focused on identity shifts, inner authority, and what it truly takes to grow beyond familiar structures.
Astrology weaves through her work as a tool for self-awareness and orientation, helping people understand how they’re wired and how to move through transitions with clarity instead of confusion.
Myrthe is also the creator of The Shift, a transformational program for visionaries and entrepreneurs who feel they’re not yet living or leading from their full potential and know they’re being called into something more aligned.
Question
If you’re in a transition right now: what feels most uncertain and what are you learning about yourself in the process?
Feel free to share in the comments. Click here. I’ll read and respond.
Subscribe to receive new articles on
self-leadership, entrepreneurship and building from alignment