Devastated Heart

When Everything Falls Apart: Finding Strength in the Shifting Ground

May, 2022

Devastated. That's the only word that could capture how I felt when I allowed myself to stop, take a breath, and truly look at my heart and mind.

For over ten years, I devoted myself to coaching and supporting childcare providers, teachers, teams and schools. I loved walking alongside them as they worked to create a shared vision with the children and families they served. It wasn't just work to me, it was a calling.

When my husband and I decided to move closer to our grandchildren and start a new chapter, I believed I had found the perfect opportunity. I accepted a role at an organization I had admired for years, thinking it would be the culmination of my career.

It wasn't.

When the position didn't work out, I felt like I had failed the people I served. At the same time, my personal life was shifting. My three boys, now grown, had moved on to build lives of their own. While proud, I felt lost. My husband and I stepped down from a ministry we had led for nearly three decades. And the home we raised our family in and where I had experimented with permaculture and created a refuge was left behind as we downsized to an apartment.

For the first time in my life, I felt completely unmoored. I had no career, no call, and no community. Every pillar I had relied on for identity, my work, my faith, my family, my home had crumbled. I felt ashamed and powerless.

I've always been someone who pushes forward, who works hard, who sees the long vision. But for the first time, I couldnt. After a weekend of uncontrollable tears, I called a therapist.

The words from my former role echoed in my head: It wasn't a good fit. What I heard instead was:

You're not good enough.

Your years of sacrifice never mattered.

You don't belong.

The shame was suffocating.

On a rational level, I knew this could be a chance to realign with my passions and pursue the work I truly cared about. But my heart and mind weren’t ready to hear that yet. Instead, this moment of loss triggered old wounds I thought I had long since dealt with.

In therapy, I found myself saying, Why is this happening? Ive worked so hard to heal. Ive been through therapy, classes upon classes, read the books, prayed the prayers, written the journals. Why now?

What I didnt realize at the time was that my past, my unaddressed pain, and my neglect of my own heart, mind, and body had collided with the present. I had spent so much of my life giving to others that I had left no space to care for myself.

For two months, I sat on my couch, surrounded by my dogs, drawing trees in my journal and listening to audiobooks on repeat. At least, that's what it felt like. I thought I was doing nothing, but in reality, I was sitting in the wreckage, letting the ground settle beneath me.

When the dust finally began to clear, I realized something: the ground hadn't disappeared. It had shifted.

What looked like devastation was actually an invitation. An invitation to rebuild not on the shaky foundation of work, achievement, or external validation, but on something deeper.

I began to see that the ground I was standing on wasn't entirely gone. It just required a closer look and a willingness to tend to it differently.

This experience taught me that grief, loss, and failure don't define us. They shape us, yes, but they also create space for something new.

It's still a journey. I'm still learning to stand on this new ground, to root myself in compassion, humility, and self-awareness. But I'm no longer huddled on the couch, consumed by shame.

Instead, I'm learning to ask: What does it mean to build a life grounded in both strength and vulnerability?

When everything falls apart, that's the question we must answer. And the answer, I've learned, begins with looking closely at the ground beneath your feet.