When Strength Starts to Crumble
I used to think my mom was just being overdramatic.
In 2013, everything in her life changed. And I knew the details—the betrayal, the implosion, the long unraveling that followed. What I didn’t understand was why she fell apart so completely.
This was the woman who raised me to be strong. Independent. Capable. She didn’t cry in front of us. She didn’t crumble. She didn’t need anyone.
Or so I believed.
So when she started spinning—talking fast, dreaming big, diving into distractions, posting picture after picture of herself “living her best life”—I didn’t see a woman coping. I saw a woman I didn’t recognize.
And I judged her for it. Not with words. Not with cruelty. But with distance. I pulled away—not because I didn’t love her, but because I didn’t understand how someone so strong could shatter so loudly.
When It’s Suddenly You
Fast forward to 2021.
My marriage was falling apart (see Mountains of Madness blog).
And I was the one talking too fast, staying too busy, clinging to distractions like they were oxygen. I was smiling big in photos while quietly crumbling inside.
And that’s when it hit me—
I broke the same way.
You Don’t Schedule a Breakdown
You don’t see it coming. One day, you’re just on the floor of your life, holding a thousand broken pieces and whispering, “I’m fine” through gritted teeth.
In 2022, I broke.
I didn’t scream or collapse in public. I just quietly drowned myself in work—running a small nonprofit movie theater, often working well past forty hours a week. Not because I was passionate, but because being busy was easier than being alone with my thoughts.
I lived on peanut M&Ms and dark chocolate cherries. My coworker, Tom, made sure I ate real food and occasionally dragged me hiking just to get me out of the spiral. I’d post smiling trail selfies like I was thriving—sunlight on my face, hair in the wind, pretending I had it all figured out.
But if you looked closely, you’d see the skin I’d picked raw. The empty eyes. The quiet wish to drive into an overpass.
After the divorce, I didn’t rest. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t heal. I launched myself into another relationship like it was a lifeboat—a second chance, a baby in my arms, an image of happiness I wasn’t ready to inhabit.
Looking back, it’s all so clear now: the frantic pace, the fake joy, the deep loneliness disguised as momentum. And suddenly—everything about my mom’s spiral made sense.
I didn’t just understand her.
I was her.
The Mirror of the Past
It’s wild how life rewrites old stories with new ink.
After I unraveled, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom—not the version across from me at the dinner table, but the one she posted online during her own spiral. The curated smiles. The constant updates. The look in her eyes that I couldn’t name at the time—but now I know too well.
They were the same eyes staring back at me in my own photos. The same I’m fine but don’t look too close expression. The same frantic need to fill every hour just to avoid feeling.
Back then, I thought she was trying too hard to move on.
Now I realize she was trying desperately not to fall apart.
She wasn’t performing joy.
She was trying to resurrect it.
And when I saw that same hollowness in myself, I finally understood that her version of healing wasn’t wrong—it was just loud survival.
The Guilt and the Grace
I wish I had understood her sooner. I wish I had reached out instead of pulling away.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I just didn’t know how to hold space for a version of her that didn’t match the one who raised me. The strong one. The steady one. The invincible one.
It’s easy to love people when they’re composed. Harder when they’re collapsing. But now I know: she didn’t owe me her composure, and I didn’t fail her by not knowing what to do.
We were both just human—hurting in different directions.
That’s where grace comes in. Not the kind that excuses everything, but the kind that wraps around guilt and says, “You didn’t know. But you do now.”
And in that knowing, there’s room for healing—for her, for me, for all the versions of us that couldn’t reach each other through the fog.
The Takeaway
The best thing you can offer—when you don’t know, when you can’t relate, when you don’t understand—is simple:
Be kind. 🖤
Always.
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