You don't have a clarity problem. You have a capacity problem.

What an 8-year-old on a mission through a department store taught me about the thing you can feel but can't name yet

A few months ago I spent a weekend at my family home, helping my mom get ready to sell it.

Forty years of life in that house. Which means forty years of stuff.

We’re talking Cabbage Patch Kids. A Babysitters Club board game. Camping equipment that hasn’t seen a campsite since 1994. Furniture my dad built by hand. And approximately one thousand other objects that somehow survived four decades and three kids.

At some point my brother held up a cassette tape.

The Cocktail soundtrack.

And then he told me a story I have absolutely zero memory of, but every cell in my body recognized immediately.

Apparently in 1988, I dragged my entire family through Eaton’s, a Canadian department store institution, now long gone, on a mission.

I needed something. I knew I needed it. I could feel it.

The problem was I had no idea what it was.

All I knew was that the kids at school kept singing Kokomo at recess, and something about that song created a pull in me I couldn’t explain or ignore. So I walked up to a man in the music section and asked for “Kokomo.”

The man had no idea what I meant.

But he stayed with me.

He didn’t dismiss me. Didn’t hand me something random and send me on my way. He stayed in the question with me, showing me options, following the thread of what I felt, until finally, together, we figured out what I was actually looking for.

The Beach Boys song on The Cocktail soundtrack. Obviously.

The girl in the store

I’ve been thinking about that little girl a lot since my brother told me the story.

Here’s what I remember about being eight. I remember feeling chubby. I remember feeling like I stuck out. I remember singing songs at recess with my friends, and how having the music, being in on something, felt really important. Like belonging you could hold in your hands.

I also remember that she asked for things. This was a kid who hid her Halloween candy under her bed and rationed it for months. Who loved grade three, loved her teacher, loved her class. A kid with wants, and a system for protecting them.

So when the pull showed up, she didn’t wait until she could articulate it perfectly. She didn’t decide it was silly. She didn’t tell herself she’d look into it when she was older, or thinner, or more sure.

She marched her entire family into a department store and asked a grown man for “Kokomo”

I have no memory of doing this. And I recognized her instantly.

Because I see her everywhere.

The adult version of the pull

I see her in every woman who sits across from me and says some version of: I know there’s something more. I can feel it. I just can’t quite get there.

The knowing is real. The pull is real. The yearning is real.

She just doesn’t have the words for it yet.

And I’m going to be honest with you, because I don’t teach this work from a distance. I’ve been living my own version of this for about a year now.

I can feel my more. It’s there. It comes with a slight dissatisfaction that sits underneath an objectively good life. And the normal tools don’t touch it. The gratitude practice doesn’t touch it. The presence hacks don’t touch it. It’s not that kind of problem.

The best way I can describe it: there is something in the field, but it’s not available yet.

And when something is in the field but not available yet, we do a very predictable thing.

We walk around saying I just want clarity.

Why “I just want clarity” is the wrong prayer

Here’s what I’ve learned, in my own life and in six years of sitting with women at exactly this threshold.

Clarity is not found. Clarity is created. And it’s created by capacity.

Let me explain what I mean, because this is where most of the self-development world gets it backwards.

When the pull shows up and there’s no room inside you to hold it, it doesn’t feel like inspiration. It feels like frustration. It feels like fear. Sitting in the what is becomes almost unbearable. The mind starts grasping for certainty: Am I doing enough? Should I be further along? What’s the plan?

And so we get busy. We jump on someone else’s strategy to feel like we’re moving forward. We take the course, follow the framework, reorganize the offer, redo the website. Not because any of it is wrong with it, but because motion feels better than fog.

None of it works, because none of it addresses what’s actually happening.

The vision isn’t hiding from you. Your system doesn’t have room for it yet.

Think about what’s consuming the space. The judger parts, running commentary on everything you might create before you create it. The manager parts, so devoted to doing that they can’t tolerate the not-knowing. The inner children who were told they were both too much and not enough. The parts that were harmed or humiliated the last time they were visible.

Every one of those parts is silently consuming capacity. And a vision, a real one, the kind that reorganizes a life, needs room to land.

You can’t perceive what you don’t have the capacity to hold. This is why the clarity hasn’t come. Not because you’re not ready. Because your system is full.

What the man in the music section actually did

Back to Eaton’s for a second.

That man could have handed eight-year-old me any cassette and sent me on my way. Most people would have. It’s efficient. It looks like helping.

Instead, he did something quietly radical. He stayed in the question with me. He took the feeling seriously before either of us had language for it. He showed me options until something in me said that’s it.

He didn’t give me clarity. He created the conditions where my own knowing could surface.

This is what I do now. It’s the whole job.

When a woman comes to me carrying the pull, I’m not trying to hand her an answer. I know the vision is there. There is something. My work is to help her judger parts subside. To help her manager parts relax their grip on doing. To sit with the inner children who learned that wanting was dangerous, and the parts that got burned the last time they were seen.

This is how capacity gets built. Not through more analysis. Through parts finally feeling met, so they can stop taking up all the room.

And alongside that inner work, we do hard things. In other areas of her life, on purpose. Because every hard thing she does and survives is evidence. Her system starts to trust her. Intimacy builds, with herself first.

And then something happens that gets me every time.

The thing reveals itself. And her response is almost never shock. It’s duh.

Of course it’s that. It was always that. She could suddenly see what had been in the field the whole time, because now she had the capacity to hold it.

The clarity was never missing. The room for it was.

The pull doesn’t resolve itself

Here’s the part I need you to hear.

That slight dissatisfaction you’ve been managing? The one that survives the gratitude practice? It doesn’t fade with time. It’s not a phase. The pull doesn’t get quieter while you wait for a better moment. It gets louder, or worse, it goes numb, and you spend your energy keeping it that way.

And your parts will always have a reason to wait. Too busy. Not ready. Wait until things settle. But things don’t settle. Life keeps lifing.

The woman you can feel yourself becoming doesn’t get any closer by waiting. She gets closer when you make room for her.

So if you’re walking around with something in the field, something you can feel but can’t name, I want you to know three things.

You’re not confused. You’re not behind. And you don’t have a clarity problem.

You have parts that are full, and a vision that’s waiting for space.

That eight-year-old in Eaton’s knew something we spend our adult lives unlearning: when you feel the pull, you take it seriously. You go looking. And you let someone stay in the question with you until the thing names itself.

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If this landed somewhere in your body, start here: my free private audio series, Nothing Is Wrong With You. It’s the beginning of exactly this work, meeting the parts that are taking up the room your more needs.

Already know you’re ready? Apply for coaching here.

With love, Andrea

PS. I kept the tape.