A quiet reckoning after the world went still
There are moments when a realization doesn’t arrive loudly. It doesn’t announce itself or demand attention. It settles in instead—heavy, unavoidable—until you’re forced to look at it directly.
I didn’t live my way through my late twenties. Those years didn’t unfold so much as they disappeared. Somewhere around March of 2020, life stopped moving forward in the way I understood, and when it resumed, I was older, altered, and standing in the middle of a life I’d built almost entirely on instinct.
Before the World Closed Its Doors
The day before we were sent home from work, we went to a Letterkenny Live show in Detroit for my ex-husband’s birthday. His sister and brother-in-law came with us. It was crowded, loud, and unremarkable in the way only normal life can be. We didn’t know it then, but that night would become a dividing line—the last clean memory of the before.
Nothing dramatic happened. No argument. No rupture. And yet, something quietly ended there. The version of us that existed before isolation, before pressure, before everything turned inward, didn’t survive what came next.
Isolation as an Accelerant
When Covid hit, it didn’t create new problems—it exposed existing ones and stripped away the distractions that had been keeping them manageable. My ex-husband couldn’t be alone. Even with me, our two dogs, and a bird, the isolation pressed in on him in ways I couldn’t fix.
At the same time, we sold our home, moved in temporarily with his mother, lost out on four houses to cash offers, and nearly lost our closest friends when they talked about relocating to Traverse City. The walls closed in. The future narrowed. What once felt like stress began to feel like suffocation.
Covid didn’t end my first marriage. It removed the buffers that had been holding it together.
Living in Survival Mode
From that point forward, life stopped unfolding gently. It arrived in waves, one after another, without pause or ceremony.
In the span of just over five years, I lived through two divorces and two bankruptcies. I experienced two miscarriages and became a mother to two children. I lost nearly 200 pounds. I underwent four surgeries, survived a car accident, came dangerously close to an overdose, and altered my body in ways that marked time—four tattoos, three piercings.
I sold my house. I moved three times. I kept going.
I also drained my 401K and spent three months in Kansas City with the future father of my children—another decision made squarely from survival instinct rather than long-term clarity. At the time, it felt necessary. Like reaching for solid ground wherever it appeared. Looking back, it fits the pattern perfectly: doing whatever it took to keep moving forward, even when I didn’t yet know where “forward” was leading.
There was no space to process any of it. No time to reflect or integrate. Each moment demanded immediate adaptation, and I learned to respond without stopping long enough to feel the full weight of what was happening.
The World We Came Back To
Covid changed more than routines. It altered the social fabric.
Children lost formative years of connection. Adults became sharper, more reactive, less patient. We proved that work could be flexible, that accessibility was possible, and then watched as institutions quietly retracted those concessions. We were told things were “back to normal,” but the tension in the air never quite dissipated.
We didn’t just lose time—we lost continuity. The sense that life moved in predictable seasons. The ability to trust that effort would be met with stability.
Coming Back to Myself
Sometime around mid-October of 2025, something shifted. Not cleanly. Not all at once. Waking up wasn’t a gentle return—it was a bumpy landing. Awareness came before relief. Clarity arrived before calm.
I could see my life again, but I was still braced for impact.
It wasn’t until after the new year that I finally exhaled without realizing I’d been holding my breath. That was the moment my body caught up to what my mind already knew: the emergency had passed. I was no longer operating on adrenaline alone.
Looking back now, it’s clear that I was building a future while disconnected from myself, moving forward because stopping wasn’t an option. I wasn’t making conscious choices so much as necessary ones.
Now, with a little distance and a little steadiness, I can see the shape of those years—not as empty, but as unreal. Like a long night you only recognize once morning has already begun.
This is where the next chapter begins. Not as a clean break, but as a continuation—one shaped by everything that came before it.
I’m growing differently now. Slower. More deliberately. Less interested in surviving at any cost and more interested in what can actually take root and last. I notice what stretches me without draining me. What asks for effort without demanding the sacrifice of myself.
I don’t need proof that I’m finished becoming. I just need to keep choosing what helps me grow—toward steadiness, toward clarity, toward a life that feels more like mine each day.
That feels like enough to build from.
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