By Rachel Hupp Cline | 5/27/2026

Ten years ago, I was standing on the porch of a cabin I was about to buy, listening to a home inspector tell me it would be a money pit. Someone I loved looked me in the eyes and asked if I was really sure. And something deep in me said yes anyway.

That one act of trusting myself built the rest of my life. In this episode of Radiantly Rooted, I sat outside on that same porch and recorded a letter to the woman I was ten years ago: three things I would go back and tell her, and the one thing I couldn’t have told her. That one, she had to live.

I think at least one of these is going to land for you, too. You can watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify, or keep reading below.

Listen on Spotify: Ep. 33, If I Could Go Back, I’d Tell Myself This

Bring Her Into the Room With You

So we finally got a break in the rain, and I had been cooped up in the house for days on end. I thought I would bring our episode outside and share a little bit of my world with you. I’m coming off of a big week, and I’m moving slow. So we’re gonna go slow together today.

It’s been a big year for me, a big month. And in hindsight, I’ve been thinking about the woman that I used to be, the version of me from ten years ago. I’ve been asking myself: if I could sit down with her right now, if I could look her in the eyes over a cup of tea or coffee, and if I could tell her what I know, what I’ve learned, what we’ve been through, what we’ve accomplished, what would I say?

And so that’s what today is. Three things I would tell her. And one thing I couldn’t have told her. She had to live it. So we’ll get there.

Before we go any further, I want to ask you something. If you’re in a space where it’s safe to do so, can you close your eyes for just a second and think about her, the version of you from ten years ago? How did she show up in her day? What was she wearing? What was she thinking? Because she’s going to be in this conversation with us, too.

2016: The Year That Built Everything

I’ve talked about some of this before, but 2016 was really a foundational year for me. It was the year that I built the rest of my life. There were three pivotal things that happened for me that year, or started to happen, and every single one of them asked me to do the one thing I was still learning how to do: trust myself.

I sold a house, and I bought a cabin on 11 acres that the home inspector called a money pit. It was. It is. I started dating the man who’s now my husband. And somewhere between teaching yoga in the room upstairs in my house and going back to my job on Monday mornings, I said yes to building this dream job on the side, a yes I couldn’t say no to, even though I couldn’t fully see it yet.

That yes became my business and is still evolving as my business. And so when I say 2016 built the rest of my life, I really mean that, because I’m living from inside of it. That’s the power of this work. That’s the power of presence.

Thing 1: Trust the Process

I’ve always been the type of person who loved to collect quotes. I had binders of them, tons and tons of clippings. Today’s quote is one I’ve been carrying with me since high school. It’s by Elbert Hubbard:

The Cabin Story

Ten years ago, give or take a couple of weeks, I was standing right here on this porch. The home inspector was out here, and I asked him his opinion. He said he wasn’t really supposed to give it to me, but in his opinion, this place would be a money pit.

At the time, I was 35 years old, a woman buying this cabin on my own, and I had absolutely no idea how I was going to find a way to make all the repairs it needed. The house was on piers on the side of a mountain, and those piers were sagging. It looked like it was tipping down the mountain and also sagging in the middle, so it looked like it was smiling. I said it looked like a happy house.

And then someone else very close to me, a person who would support me no matter what, said, “Are you sure? Are you really sure that’s what you want? It takes a really rugged person to live out here.” And I said yes. In my soul, yes, this is what I want. Something in my heart said, this is right.

You may know exactly what I’m talking about right now. You’re standing in the middle of something, a decision, a direction, a dream, and everybody around you has an opinion. But something in you knows. And sometimes it’s hard, because the voices in the room can be louder than your inner voice.

And so if I was standing here with that woman right now, the woman who was standing on the same deck ten years ago questioning herself, questioning her truth, here’s what I’d tell her and here’s what I tell you: trust the process. Even when it doesn’t look like what other people would call smart. Trust the process when it feels true to your core, to your soul, to your heart. The tide goes out before it comes in. You might be on that line right now and not even know it, so keep going, keep trusting, keep moving forward.

Thing 2: The Becoming Is the Whole Thing

Here’s an affirmation I had on my bulletin board for years, attributed to Alice Potter: “I am optimistic and confident in all that I do. I affirm only the best for myself and others. I am the creator of my life and my world. I meet daily challenges gracefully and with complete confidence. I fill my mind with positive, nurturing, and healing thoughts.”

I used to say it almost like I was trying to convince myself it was true. But then over time, it became true.

When the Timing Was Right Because You Were Ready

Two weeks after I closed on this cabin, after I had just made the biggest trust-your-gut decision of my adult life, I went on the first date with the man who’s now my husband. We had been in each other’s circles for a while, and so maybe it was just coincidental timing, but trust the process. Trust yourself.

What I know is this: had I met him at a different time, it wouldn’t have been the right time. I had to evolve into the woman who was ready for this kind of a relationship. I had spent years getting back to myself, figuring out who I was again. I had lost myself, and I had to unbecome everything that I had become that wasn’t me, that didn’t fit anymore.

And in that unbecoming, in making choices that were mine, in trusting myself toward the cabin and toward the business that was coming, toward the life that actually fit me, I finally became this version of myself who could recognize what was right for me when it showed up.

You are evolving into the person who is ready for the life that you’re creating. That becoming, as much as it can feel like it sometimes, it’s not the delay. The becoming is the whole thing.

So trust yourself, even when, and especially when, you’re the only one in the room who can see what you’re becoming, and perhaps beneath that, even more importantly, what you’re unbecoming to get there.

Thing 3: Keep Going

The third thing I would’ve told myself is to keep going. Just keep going in the direction of your dreams. Somewhere in 2016, between the cabin and that first date and the Monday morning commute back to my day job, I said yes inside my body. It was a quiet, deep knowing that I had known for a while: corporate life wasn’t where my story ended.

Nine Years. Not Waiting. Building.

I didn’t actually start my business on paper until 2019. I was a contractor from late 2015 through 2019, and I didn’t walk away from my day job until late 2025 last year. So nine years between the moment that I knew and the moment that I was ready to step into my next evolution.

And so you might be thinking, “Nine years? I don’t have nine years.” And I want to touch on that because all of our timelines are different. The nine years, I wasn’t waiting. I was building. Every yoga teacher training, my life coach certification, my health coach certification, the energy healing, every late night of learning, traveling for teacher trainings, every layer of the work, that was the universe answering a yes that I had already said in my body many, many years ago.

So keep moving forward, small steady steps in the direction of your dreams. Baby steps in the direction of your dreams. The tide is turning.

The One Thing She Had to Live

A heads-up: this section speaks to deep grief. Feel free to scroll ahead if you need to.

There’s one thing I couldn’t have told my younger self, couldn’t have planned for, couldn’t have prepared for. And what I had to learn was that the world will crack you open, probably more than once. You will experience grief that steals your breath, that you genuinely don’t know how you’re going to survive. And so if you’re going through that now, if you’ve been through that, my heart goes out to you. Because I know you know what I mean.

What I want to share with you is that it really is as bad as you think it is. But over time, you will put those pieces back together. I figured out how to put the pieces of myself back together when I shattered, even though there’s still a gaping hole. Even if it feels like it takes duct tape and it’s hanging on by a thread, over time, you can put those pieces back together.

You Let Yourself Be Held

I had to learn to allow myself to lean on my family and my friends, to let them hold me up when I couldn’t do it myself, and to be the person who can hold space for others in their grief, to hold them up when they can’t do it. So you let yourself be held when you need to. You do the holding when others need you to. And none of that is weakness. It’s just how we were built to navigate these times.

On the other side of that cracking open, before it and even within it, there’s joy. Joy beyond anything you can currently imagine. A relationship I could only dream of, a home I could only dream of, a life I could only dream of. And I never fixed that hole. It will never heal, and certainly didn’t all come together because I’ve got everything figured out.

Let yourself be in the messy part. Let yourself still be in it. The joy and the grief can live in the same body. Trust the process. Trust yourself. Trust the unbecoming.

Where to Start If You’re Stuck

I want to leave you with one last thing, a quote from Melody Ross at the Brave Girls Club that I printed out a long time ago and have kept coming back to:

“Dear sweet girl, today is the most important day ever because today is the one and only day that you have right now. Today you get to decide what you want to do, how you want to be in the world, how you want to help, and how you want to feel. Today you get to decide what you want to learn and how you want to spend your time. You don’t have yesterday anymore, and you don’t have tomorrow yet, so today is the most important day you have. Today you get to live your life in the way that only you can. Make the most of it, lovely girl.”

Every single thing I’ve talked about today comes back to the same place. Trust the woman who lives in your heart, not the timeline, not the voices around you. Trust yourself, the voice within. She’s been there the whole time. And even if we take some missteps along the way, that’s part of the process. There’s no failure except in no longer trying.

My work, the reason that I show up here every week, is to help you come home to the parts of yourself you’ve lost or maybe set aside or edited out because you thought they didn’t fit the story you were supposed to be telling. But is that your story? Or is it the story you were taught to believe? Because I believe that whisper in your heart has been right your whole life. It’s been trying to guide you your whole life. And I want to help you hear it again.

So wherever you are on that map, wherever you are on that journey, I’m so glad that you were here with me today.

Now, I made something a little while back that’s been super helpful for me along my own journey of trying to hear my own inner voice and connect with the energy that my body needs. It’s a free chakra quiz, and it’s going to help you figure out where in your body and in your life you might be the most out of balance, the most in balance, or anywhere in between. It can be a really gentle place to start coming back home to yourself.

Most of the people who’ve taken this so far have told me that the results were uncannily accurate, that they weren’t necessarily surprised by them. They were things they’d known they needed to work on for a while. But breaking it down so clearly gave them the focus to know exactly where to invest their energy in the weeks and months ahead.

I’m going to leave that link right below so you can take it when you get a chance. And then if you want to, come back and share in the comments what your results were. Most people tell me they weren’t surprised. But having it broken down so clearly gave them exactly the focus they needed to know where to invest their energy next.

Take the free Chakra Quiz here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “trust the process” actually mean when you’re in the middle of a hard decision?

It means honoring the quiet knowing in your body even when the voices around you say otherwise. In this episode, Rachel describes standing in front of a house everyone told her was a mistake and choosing to listen to what felt true in her heart instead. Trusting the process isn’t blind optimism. It’s learning to treat your inner voice as a reliable source of information, especially when external circumstances are uncertain.

How do you keep going when you can’t see results from the inner work you’re doing?

The reframe Rachel offers is this: the work you’re doing to come back to yourself isn’t keeping you from the life you want. It’s making you into the person who is ready to receive it. Small, steady steps in the direction of your dreams are still movement, even when they don’t look dramatic from the outside. The line between where you are and where you’re going might be finer than you think.

Is it possible to hold grief and joy at the same time?

Yes, and Rachel speaks to this directly from her own experience. She describes carrying a grief that will never fully heal alongside a joy she once could only dream of. The body has capacity for both. You don’t have to resolve one to have access to the other, and learning to hold both without forcing resolution is part of the deeper work of coming home to yourself.

What’s a simple first step if I don’t know where to start?

Rachel recommends her free Chakra Quiz as a grounding starting point. It helps you identify where in your body and life you might be most out of balance so you know exactly where to focus your energy, instead of trying to work on everything at once. Take it at rachelhupp.com/chakra-quiz.

How long does coming home to yourself actually take?

It’s different for everyone, and timelines can be misleading. Nine years passed between the moment Rachel knew and the moment she stepped fully into her next evolution. She wasn’t waiting. She was building layer by layer. The timeline isn’t the point. The direction is. If you’re ready to go deeper on this work, learn more about Radiantly Rooted at rachelhupp.com/radiantlyrooted.

One breath, one moment at a time, we return to ourselves.