I Don’t Know, Either.

She sat across from me, carrying something heavy enough that it seemed to bend the air in the room.

At one point, after laying out the reality of what she’s facing, she looked at me with a slight smile and said, “You’re supposed to give me words of wisdom about the path ahead.”

There was no edge in it. No sarcasm. Just a quiet, honest expectation - the kind that people bring into therapy when the ground has dropped out from under them and they’re hoping someone else has a map.

And I understood that moment deeply. Because when life gets that hard, we all want someone to step in and say, Here’s what’s going to happen. Here’s how you get through it. Here’s how this ends.

But I couldn’t give her that, and we've known one another long enough that she knew that I couldn't - and I wouldn't even pretend that I could.

Not because I didn’t care. Not because I wasn’t paying attention. But because the truth is, I don’t know either.

I don’t know how her situation will unfold. I don’t know what decisions will feel right when the pressure tightens. And if I’m being fully honest, I don’t even know exactly how I would handle it if our roles were reversed.

That’s the part of therapy people don’t always expect.

They imagine that sitting across from them is someone who has life figured out. Someone who has already solved the problems they’re facing. Someone who can offer certainty in the middle of chaos.

But therapy isn’t about certainty.

It’s about presence.

It’s about two people sitting in the reality of something hard, without pretending it’s easier than it is. It’s about slowing things down enough to actually see what’s happening, instead of rushing to fix it. It’s about noticing the patterns, the fears, the instincts that show up when life stops cooperating.

I told her something simple.

“I can’t give you a roadmap for this. But I can walk with you while you figure it out.”

And that’s the work.

Not leading from ten steps ahead. Not handing out instructions from some imagined place of expertise over life itself. But walking alongside someone as they navigate terrain that is, in many ways, unknowable.

Because the truth is, most of life is.

We don’t know how relationships will evolve. We don’t know how loss will change us. We don’t know what we’ll do when we’re finally in the moment we’ve been fearing.

What we can do is learn how we meet those moments.

Do we shut down or stay present? Do we react or pause long enough to choose? Do we abandon ourselves to survive, or stay connected to who we are even when it’s hard?

Those are the things therapy can actually help with.

Not predicting the future.But strengthening the person who has to live it.

There’s a quiet kind of power in admitting “I don’t know.”

Not as resignation. But as honesty.

Because once we stop pretending we have control over everything, we can start focusing on what’s actually within reach: how we think, how we feel, how we respond, and how we stay connected to ourselves and others along the way.

That’s not a roadmap, it’s something better.

It’s a way of walking.

And when someone is facing something incredibly difficult, what they often need most isn’t a set of directions.

It’s not being alone on the path.