4 Things Kitty Gonzalez Taught Me About Navigating the Magic Dark

Career transitions are rarely clean. There's usually a period in the middle — after you've decided something needs to change and before anything has actually shifted — where it feels more like fumbling in the dark than moving toward something.

Kitty Gonzalez knows that period well. A certified coach, yoga teacher, and former L'Oreal marketing director, Kitty has navigated more than one significant pivot — from corporate to independent practice, from solo coaching back to a company role. On a recent episode of In Her Words, she was refreshingly honest about what that process actually looks like from the inside.

Here are four things that stuck with me.

1. Name the phase you're in.

Kitty introduced me to a concept from the brand To Be Magnetic — the idea of the "magic dark." It's that uncomfortable stretch where you've committed to making a change, but the results haven't materialized yet. You're taking the steps, but nothing has landed. It's scary, it's disorienting, and most people interpret the discomfort as a sign they're doing something wrong.

What Kitty described and what I find useful; is that naming the phase can help you stay in it. When you know you're in the magic dark, you can remind yourself: the discomfort isn't evidence that it won't work. It's just evidence that you're in the middle.

"When I'm in that space, I'm just like, okay, there's magic happening that I can't see because I'm in the dark, but it's happening — and trusting that it is, because that's always the experience."

2. Keep moving — even when it's awkward.

One of the most grounded pieces of advice in this conversation was also the simplest: don't stop doing the things, even when doing them feels uncomfortable. Kitty talked about her own job search this past summer: applying to more roles than she could count, reaching out to people she didn't know well, sending the messages that felt awkward to send.

What she found surprised her: people showed up. Former colleagues, distant contacts, people she'd barely spoken to — they responded, they offered time, they connected her to the right people. The help was there. She just had to ask for it.

If you're in the middle of a transition and you've been hesitating to reach out, to apply, to put yourself out there — this is your signal. The only way to find out what's on the other side is to keep walking toward it.

3. Give yourself six months — or at least three weeks.

Kitty grew up moving between countries — Mexico City and Connecticut, back and forth — and she learned early that adjustment takes time. She developed a personal rule for every new transition: give it six months before drawing conclusions. If you hate it, wait. You haven't seen it yet.

Now that she's moving between familiar places, her timeline is shorter — but she still gives herself a deliberate window. The first two weeks after any transition, she said, her mind is scattered, her space is chaotic, and she's operating in adjustment mode. Expecting clarity or momentum from that starting point isn't realistic.

This applies to career transitions too. If you've just left a role, started something new, or restructured your work significantly — you are probably still in adjustment mode. Building your community, finding your rhythm, and getting a real read on how things feel all take longer than we want them to. That's not failure. That's just how it works.

4. Your definition of success is allowed to change.

When Kitty was at L'Oreal, success looked like climbing. When she left to start her coaching practice, success looked like making the business work. And now? She described something more layered — time with her husband and her cat, walks in nature, work she respects in a company she believes in. Not optimized for a single thing.

What I found most honest in this part of the conversation was her acknowledgment that she's still working on it. She didn't package this as a completed evolution — more as an ongoing one. The wheel of her life looks different than it used to, and she's still figuring out what she actually wants each part of it to look like.

That's worth holding onto if you're mid-transition. You're not required to have a fixed definition of success that you arrived at ten years ago. What you want is allowed to evolve as you do.

Connect with Kitty

• You can find Kitty on Instagram at @whereverforever

🎧 Want to go deeper?

Listen to the full episode of In Her Words to hear Kitty share more about her journey