Have you ever stood in the middle of a store, staring at two nearly identical products, and just… couldn’t decide?

It sounds almost ridiculous saying it out loud. It’s just a purchase. It shouldn’t matter that much. But after significant loss, I’ve learned that decisions often become about a lot more than the decision itself.

One of the things that surprised me after Bob died was how much I started questioning myself. Not just the big decisions — though those were hard enough. The small ones too. Should I move? Should I take this job? Should I go on this trip? Should I replace the car? Even the everyday choices started feeling heavier than they used to.

It took me a while to understand why.

For years, I hadn’t been making those decisions entirely on my own. That’s just what happens in a healthy relationship. You talk things through. You bounce ideas off each other. One person notices something the other missed. Sometimes you already know the answer, but hearing someone else say “I think you’re right” is what actually gives you the confidence to move forward.

I wasn’t just grieving the loss of my husband. I was grieving the loss of my sounding board.

I remember a woman named Sally from one of my grief support groups telling the group about buying her first new car after her husband, Ed, died. She said the hardest part wasn’t choosing the car at all. It was realizing she had no one sitting beside her asking the questions they would have asked together. No one to say, “What do you think about this one?” No one there to reassure her she was making a good decision.

To someone who hasn’t lived through that kind of loss, it might sound like a small thing. To those of us who have, it’s anything but. Because the car was never really the point. The point was realizing that life now required a completely different kind of trust, one she hadn’t needed before.

For a long time, I thought what I’d lost was confidence itself. Looking back, I don’t think that’s quite right. What I lost was shared confidence. There’s a real difference between the two.

The good news is that self-trust can be rebuilt. Not all at once. Not through positive thinking or by pretending you’re not afraid. It comes back one decision at a time — choosing the restaurant, booking the trip, trying the class, saying yes to an opportunity that scares you a little. Each one becomes a small piece of evidence that reminds you: I can actually do this.

I also had to stop demanding certainty from myself. For a long time, I wanted to know I was making the right decision before I made it. The problem is that certainty is almost never available to anyone. Most of us are simply making the best decision we can with the information we have on that particular day. That’s all any of us has ever done. Having a partner didn’t make the future any more certain. It simply meant we carried the uncertainty together.

I’ve made decisions that worked out beautifully. I’ve made decisions I’d probably make differently now, looking back. Both taught me something. Neither one defined me. And over time, those experiences built something I didn’t even realize I was rebuilding — trust. Not trust that every decision would turn out perfect. Trust that whatever happened next, I’d figure it out, because that’s exactly what I’d already been doing the whole time without fully noticing.

Even now, there are moments when I catch myself wondering what Bob would have thought about something I’m deciding. I don’t think those moments ever fully disappear, and I’m not sure I’d want them to. But something else has shifted. I no longer need the answer in order to move forward. I can appreciate the memory, consider what he might have said, and then trust myself to make the decision that actually belongs to the life I’m living now.

I think that’s one of the little victories people don’t talk about enough after loss. There comes a day when you realize you’re not waiting for someone else to tell you you’ll be okay. You already know. Not because life became predictable, and not because you stopped making mistakes. But because you’ve lived through enough uncertainty already to know you’ll find your way again.

Your Turn

This week, I’d like you to think about a decision you’ve been putting off. Is it really the decision itself you’re unsure about — or are you questioning whether you can trust yourself with whatever comes after it?

What’s one small choice you could make this week that reminds you how much you’ve already learned? Because self-trust was never about choosing perfectly. It’s remembering that you’ve already survived, adapted, and grown through more than you once thought possible — and that’s pretty good evidence you can trust yourself with whatever comes next.