Nine Months Later: I Had No Plan. The Cycle Did.

Subtitle: A Nine-Month Follow-Up on Death, Rebirth and Starting Over in a New City

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When I first wrote about the nine-month cycle, I was looking back at a period of endings.

I could see the death. I could see the rebirth. What I couldn’t see yet was that the cycle never truly ends. It simply evolves into a deeper version of itself.

Since September 2025, the biggest realization has been this: not every death is dramatic.

Some deaths arrive quietly.

The death of an identity. The death of a title. The death of a role you carried for years without anyone asking if you still wanted it.

For years I identified as a real estate agent. Before that, the daughter who held everything together. Before that, the caretaker. Before that, the people-pleaser.

What I see now is that every rebirth required me to release a label before I could discover who I was underneath it. And the most disorienting part of that process wasn’t the loss — it was the freedom. Because freedom can feel deeply uncomfortable when you’ve spent years carrying responsibilities that no longer belong to you.

There is a strange moment after every transformation where nothing is wrong, yet everything feels unfamiliar. That space is not confusion. It’s integration. It’s the period where your old life has ended but your new life hasn’t fully formed yet. And the only thing asked of you in that space is trust.

Trust that what is leaving is creating room. Trust that what is ending has served its purpose. Trust that growth rarely looks like growth while you’re living through it.

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So what did these nine months actually look like?

A year ago I made a decision that my mind could not fully comprehend but my body had already committed to.

I sold my home in Toronto. I went no contact with my father. I walked away from a ten-year real estate career that still had people calling me with offers. I closed on my property without a plan. And then I followed a pull I couldn’t explain — toward Montreal.

I had been to Montreal many times over the years. Something about it always resonated — the European streets, the mountain I could walk to, the cafés, the croissants, the way people live outside rather than inside their lives. Each visit I found myself thinking I should be here. And each time I tried to reason myself out of it. Snap out of it. Be practical. You don’t even speak French.

But I couldn’t shake it.

My mother was gone. My father had abandoned his family. My siblings had their own lives. And for the first time in a long time I asked myself a question I had never quite asked before: What do I actually want? Not for anyone else. For me.

I also looked at my astrocartography chart — your astrological map for where in the world your energy is best supported for living and growth. Every line pointed to Montreal. Sometimes the signs you’ve been waiting for show up so clearly that ignoring them would take more effort than following them.

So I followed.

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September arrived. So did everything I didn’t plan for.

I landed in Montreal with a booked Airbnb, no real routine, and the quiet task of creating a foundation — which became the word and the theme for everything that followed.

A few days after settling in, my Jeep was stolen.

Most people would have taken that as a sign to turn around. I took it as confirmation. Now for real everything had been removed. Now for real I was starting from scratch — in a city where I barely spoke the language, without a car, without a plan, without the identity I had spent a decade building.

So I enrolled in French school. Most students waited six months to a year to get in. I started two weeks after applying.

By December my insurance had paid out and a new Jeep was on its way.

By January I had moved from one Airbnb to another, changing neighbourhoods, feeling my way toward something I couldn’t name yet.

In February a friend messaged me. Her neighbour was leaving.

By March I had moved into a triplex.

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Now — if you know me at all — you need to understand what a triplex means to me.

It’s not just a property type. It’s a dream I’ve carried since I was young, since I first stepped into my cousin Nikki’s triplex in Toronto and thought this is exactly how I want to live. Nikki was the only person in my life who knew this about me because she understood it the same way.

When I called her to tell her where I’d landed she screamed. “Oh my god, Dori — A TRIPLEX!!!!”

And then, as if the universe hadn’t already made its point clearly enough — the unit downstairs became available too. I took it.

Here is the part that still stops me when I think about it: the friend I moved into this building with is the same woman who once booked my Airbnb in Toronto, came to stay, and in doing so first brought me to Montreal. She let me stay in her place on one of those visits. That place is now my place.

In nine months, both units in this specific triplex — in a city where good properties rarely open up — became available unexpectedly. And I am sitting in one of them right now writing this.

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Rebirth is not about becoming someone new.

It’s about becoming more of yourself.

Less performance. Less proving. Less chasing.
More truth. More alignment. More authenticity.

The death-rebirth cycles I’ve lived before were built around survival and healing. This one feels different. Previous cycles asked how do I get through this? This one is asking what do I build now?

That shift is significant. Because at some point healing has to become living. At some point the lesson stops being about releasing the past and starts being about creating the future.

About a year ago I went from writing sales pitches for new developments in Toronto to journaling and writing short stories. I didn’t have a plan for that either.

And here I am — foundation set, city chosen, dream home found, writing career begun.

I’m not at the end of a chapter. I’m not quite at the beginning of one either. I’m in the space where the pen finally feels comfortable in my own hand.

Nine months. No plan. Somehow exactly where I’m supposed to be.