When the Bubble Breaks - Burnout Recovery, Grief, and Rebirth
How About You?
When the Bubble Breaks
It’s hard to explain this season of my life, but I know it’s different.
Everything feels different. The air feels different. The music sounds different. Even the rhythm of life itself has shifted. And so have I.
For so long, I’ve been floating inside this bubble. Maybe it was the bubble of Mom’s cancer. Maybe it was survival mode. Maybe it was the protective shell that life quietly builds around you when everything feels too fragile to touch.
But now? That bubble is breaking! And suddenly, I can see everything more clearly. I can feel everything more deeply. And nothing satisfies the way it used to. The routines feel flat. The writing that once poured out of me feels distant. The ways I kept to myself just to survive - they simply don’t fit anymore.
And that’s unsettling.
I’ve been through transitions before - the hard, soul-shifting kind. Getting clean and sober taught me a lot about what it means to rebuild your life from the inside out. But this? This feels bigger than anything I’ve walked through. It’s quieter, but also heavier, as if everything I thought I knew about myself is rearranging all at once.
The wildest part? I knew this was coming. I had been told that this year would be about breaking open. That old grief I thought I had worked through - the grief from now, the grief from childhood - it’s been surfacing in unexpected ways. But grief is only part of it. This isn’t just about loss. It’s about rediscovery. About finding the parts of me I packed away to stay digestible. It’s about letting go of what doesn’t serve me, even when it’s uncomfortable.
I want to be fully present for this. Not just for myself, but for the people in my life - the ones who stay, the ones who show up, the ones whose presence feels like home. I’ve always wanted to be that steady lighthouse for others. The kind you can see through the fog when life gets hard. Not flashy. Not perfect. Just solid. Just there.
And I feel that shift happening now.
Everything is changing - including my relationships. Some people won’t stay. That part is hard, but I’ve made peace with it. Not everyone is meant to go where I’m going. But the ones who are? The ones who stay? Those connections are becoming unbreakable. Stronger than anything I’ve ever known.
It’s like I can finally taste the life I’ve been craving - not the surface version, but the deep, grounded, honest version. The version where I’m not performing peace, I’m actually living it.
It hasn’t been neat or easy. There’s been grief, yes, but also a quiet knowing that this is about more than loss. It’s about becoming. It’s about stepping in fully - not to chase some perfect, polished version of myself, but to embrace the person I am right now, messy edges and all.
There’s a part of me that didn’t survive this season - the version of me who made herself small, who silenced her gifts out of fear or doubt. She’s gone. And she was never meant to last.
But I’m still here.
And so are you.
We’re still becoming. We’re still learning to let go of what doesn’t serve us. We’re still finding our place, our people, our truth. And even if we don’t have the whole map laid out yet, we’re walking toward what’s next - steady, raw, and wide awake!
I don’t have a neat lesson or tidy advice. Just this - if you’re in that space too, where the bubble is breaking and everything feels unfamiliar, I want you to know you’re not alone. Maybe it’s uncomfortable. Maybe it’s uncertain. But maybe… it’s your time to step in too.
Have you felt that shift? The air changing? The old unraveling so the new can finally rise?
I’d love to hear where you’re at.
Transform To Wellness- Kathleen Thorne RN, LMT (RN3252112/ MA54880)
"Nothing satisfies the way it used to." That resonates with me.
Well, yes, I feel it too. I wrote a lovely response of my experience with this feeling—how I was determined to stand up and to stay with my own “shift” into becoming —despite the onslaughts that stir up my own self-doubt—but an accidental swipe of my thumb made it all disappear…I was like “What’s with that?” I enjoyed reading your thoughts on just the same.