Rebuilding From the Inside Out

For years, I focused on gratitude, telling myself that if I could just stay positive, everything would be okay. But this year, something shifted. I began to feel the pain I had buried—how much I had been carrying, and all the ways I had ignored it just to keep moving forward.

The year started with what I thought was the answer: a stable job that could help me tackle the debt from years of fighting a lawsuit. I liked the job. I loved my clients, and I found joy in client services. It felt like something I could do well.

But I was exhausted.

Waking up at 5 a.m. to drive Dave to work (we shared a car), getting my kids to school, and working a full day just to scrape by—it became too much. The exhaustion built up, and my health began to unravel. At the same time, I was grappling with anxiety attacks which I had never had before and a growing realization: I couldn’t keep living this way. Then, a family crisis hit. A loved one fell into addiction, and I became a caregiver for my niece—a role I desperately wanted to fulfill but felt unequipped for.

I felt broken.

I tried to fix it all. I quit drinking, changed my eating habits, and detoxed. But no matter what I did, nothing worked. The harder I tried to hold it all together, the more everything seemed to fall apart. I found myself in and out of hospitals, undergoing test after test.

The results have been unsettling: a cyst on my liver, a heart with extra beats, endometriosis, and a compromised digestive system. My body was waving a giant red flag. Was this the wake-up call I needed to start to feel?

I allowed myself to feel the sadness, the fear, and the anger. And oh, how angry I was. I stopped pretending I could handle everything on my own. I reached out for help and started therapy, knowing I needed to prioritize my healing.

Admitting that I couldn’t do it all was hard. Writing this now feels incredibly vulnerable. But therapy taught me an important truth: when we disown our difficult stories to appear whole or acceptable, we lose the chance to grow. As Brené Brown says, “Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

For years, I was too scared to share what was in my heart, terrified of judgment. Fear can be paralyzing, especially when you’ve lost your home, your possessions, and even relationships. 

But I’m learning that while facing the truth is painful, it’s also the only way forward.

So here I am, picking up the pieces and starting to rebuild. There’s no neat, tidy ending to this story—just the raw, messy process of self-discovery.