Coming Home

I Didn’t Know How Much I Was Carrying

I didn’t realize how much damage I was carrying until I started to feel better.

That’s the part no one warns you about. Healing doesn’t arrive with instant relief or clarity — it arrives quietly, through memory. Suddenly, the good times come back. The people who helped shape me resurface. The friendships that once defined my life return as memories — no longer part of my daily world, but still held close to my heart.

I spent 25 years in a career that asked a lot of me. I gave it my loyalty, my energy, and my resilience. But after a company buyout, something shifted. What I once called strength began to feel like exhaustion. What I thought was commitment started to feel like misalignment.

Leaving wasn’t one dramatic moment of courage. It was a series of small realizations — that healing needed space, that clarity required stillness, and that remembering myself mattered more than proving I could keep going.

This is a story about endurance and awareness. About walking away from something familiar. And about what happens when you stop surviving long enough to notice what you’ve been carrying.

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The Shift I Didn’t See Coming

The buyout came as a shock to some, but it shouldn’t have. On paper, the signs were there — shifting priorities, new language, a gradual move away from the values that had once anchored the work. Still, what I didn’t expect was how quickly the ground beneath me started to feel unfamiliar.

The work was still the work. The responsibilities didn’t disappear — they multiplied. Doing more with less became the unspoken expectation. Years of experience and earned certifications were treated as irrelevant, sometimes even laughed off, as if knowledge itself had lost its value.

Everything was technically “normal.” Meetings continued. Emails were sent. Expectations were met. But something underneath it all felt off — not loud or dramatic, just quietly wrong. I began to understand that normal doesn’t always mean healthy, and functioning isn’t the same as being okay.

But pushing through has a cost.

I didn’t recognize it at first. It showed up as exhaustion I couldn’t shake. As a dull heaviness I carried home with me. As a growing distance between who I was at work and who I was becoming everywhere else.

I get up.
I walk.
I fall down.
Meanwhile, I keep dancing.
— Daniel Hillel

What I see now is that the buyout didn’t break me. It revealed the fractures that had been quietly forming for years — the ones created by always choosing endurance over alignment.

And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.

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When the Title Slipped Away

Somewhere along the way, I stopped identifying with my title.

It didn’t happen all at once. There was no announcement, no confrontation. Instead, my role quietly shifted. I became the cleaner-upper — the one brought in to absorb what others didn’t want to deal with. The emotional support therapist. The steady presence meant to smooth conflict, carry frustration, and keep things moving, no matter the cost.

I was trusted, but not respected in the way that grows a career. Valued for my capacity to hold things together, but not for the depth of my knowledge. My experience wasn’t asked for — it was leaned on.

For a long time, I mistook that for importance. I told myself this was leadership. That being needed was the same as being valued. But slowly, it became clear that my role had shifted from contributor to container.

That was the moment something inside me began to detach — quietly, decisively.

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What Was Already Happening

What I couldn’t see at the time was that the changes at work weren’t happening in isolation.

I was already carrying damage.

In 2013, breast cancer entered my life. Treatment ended, but the experience didn’t. The trauma stayed — settling quietly into my body and nervous system. The vigilance. The fear. The permanent shift in how you live inside your own body.

I kept working. I kept showing up. I kept functioning.

In 2018, I took a trip to Nepal with my son. I flew halfway around the world and found myself more awake than I had been in years. Nepal didn’t offer answers — it offered awareness. Of the world’s struggles and its beauty. Of people holding opposite beliefs, living side by side in harmony, even while surrounded by chaos. I returned home changed, even if I didn’t yet know what to do with that knowing.

I returned, and I kept going.

By the time I left my career in 2019, I had already absorbed years of cumulative strain — physical, emotional, and psychological. Walking away removed the structure I had relied on for decades, but it didn’t remove what my body had been carrying.

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Closing

I’ve walked with one toe in the red most of my life.

It keeps me balanced.
It keeps me aware.
It keeps me safe.

Ignorance is what stalls us.

And I want to keep breathing.