Knock on Wood (and Then Let Go)

When life’s doors don’t open, maybe it’s time to stop knocking and listen instead.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had Taylor Swift’s new song “Wood” stuck on repeat in my head all weekend.

Once I got past all of the innuendos, it had me thinking about how often we “knock on wood” — hoping to avoid bad luck, manifest good timing, or convince the universe to cooperate.

I’ve knocked on everything from doorframes to dashboard panels. (Once, even a cutting board.) But the more I do this work — as a human in transition and as a Transition Doula — the more I realize most of us are knocking on the wrong doors altogether.

We knock out of fear.
We knock because we’re afraid of silence.
We knock because we can’t quite believe the universe heard us the first time.

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The Problem With Knocking

The superstition of “knock on wood” is about protection — as if wood can absorb the bad juju. But in life transitions, that habit turns into over-efforting. We keep knocking on jobs, relationships, or paths that have already said no thank you.

We treat every delay like a sign to try harder, when sometimes it’s actually a sign to let go.

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Three Questions to Ask Before You Knock Again

1. Is this door even mine?
   Sometimes we inherited doors — from parents, exes, mentors — and keep knocking because it’s familiar, not because it fits.

2. What’s my body doing while I knock?
   If your shoulders are tense and your breath is shallow, that’s not manifestation — that’s muscle memory. Your intuition might already be halfway down the hallway toward something new.

3. What if the silence is the answer?
   Maybe the universe isn’t ignoring you. Maybe it’s giving you the gift of stillness until you remember which door you actually wanted to open.

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The Doula’s Take

Transitions are full of knocks that go unanswered. That doesn’t mean you’re unlucky; it means you’re being invited to trust timing instead of superstition.

In my Transition Doula sessions, I help people turn those anxious knocks into conscious pauses — the moment where you put your hand on the wood, take a breath, and say, Okay. I’m listening now.

I’m reminded of a tree I once visited deep in the Costa Rican jungle — an ancient giant with roots so vast you could crawl through one and stand inside its hollow center. Ten people could easily gather there in the pitch-black coolness, the air damp with earth and alive with quiet. Bats hung sleeping overhead. It felt like entering the womb of the world.

That space — dark, still, sacred — is what the in-between feels like. It’s what I help people find in themselves when everything external has gone silent.

Because wood doesn’t just absorb bad luck. It remembers. It holds stories, echoes, and beginnings. Every closed door, every fallen tree, once grew toward light.

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Closing Reflection

So by all means, knock on wood if it helps you feel lucky.
But then press your ear against it.
There might be a heartbeat on the other side — not of what’s ending, but of what’s waiting to begin.

Call on Nemetona, keeper of sacred groves and guardian of thresholds. She teaches us that every doorway — every choice to stay or to go — is holy ground. When we honor our transitions with presence instead of panic, we build our own inner sanctuary. Listen for her whisper in the woodgrain: You are safe to release. You are safe to begin again.

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