Things I Did When My Life Fell Apart (A List. With Zero Shame.)

I want to tell you something nobody in the wellness industry will admit.

When your life falls apart - really falls apart, not "I had a bad week" falls apart, but "I lost my job, my friends, my identity and my will to shower" falls apart - you do not handle it like a podcast host.

You do not wake up at 5am and journal. You do not drink green smoothies and manifest your way out. You do not, despite what every Instagram quote tells you, immediately rise from the ashes like a graceful phoenix in linen trousers.

You lie on the floor. Sometimes literally.

And then you do a bunch of things you'll later find either deeply relatable or mildly embarrassing. Possibly both.

Here's my list. Real ones. In order of occurrence.

1. I adopted my cats' sleeping schedule. Except I did it backwards.

They sleep at night. I started living there.

3am. Wide awake. Vodka. The blue light of my phone. A silence that felt less loud after midnight when everyone else was also unavailable and it didn't feel like abandonment - it just felt like night.

My cats eventually switched shifts to keep me company. They'd been morning cats their whole lives. Within a month they were nocturnal too. I had successfully corrupted two innocent animals with my grief spiral.

I stopped calling it insomnia. I started calling it my cats' new lifestyle. Same chaos. Slightly funnier framing.

2. I cancelled the gym so many times they probably lit a candle for me.

I had a plan. The plan involved 6am workouts and endorphins and becoming someone who "runs to process emotions." That person does not exist in my life. She never has.

What exists in my life is a woman who, during her darkest season, walked 10,000 steps a day through the streets of a city that no longer felt like hers, listening to the same playlist on repeat, crying behind sunglasses like a cliché - and slowly, quietly, not giving up.

That counted. The gym did not.

3. I texted my ex. Twice.

I'm going to let that sentence breathe for a moment.

I knew better. Every therapist, book, and podcast I'd consumed in the previous 8 months knew better. My cats, who are better judges of character than I am, knew better.

I did it anyway.

Because at 2am when the silence in your apartment gets loud enough to hear, and the person you lost is still the last person whose voice felt like home - you reach for familiar. Even when familiar was also painful. Even when you know.

We don't always heal in a straight line. Sometimes we text our exes. Then we wake up the next morning, roll our eyes at ourselves, drink coffee, and keep going.

It counts. The keep going part.

4. I spent money I didn't really have on things I didn't really need.

Twenty years in finance. Twenty years. I can read a balance sheet in my sleep. I know compound interest like I know my own name.

And I bought a silk pillowcase, three books I'll probably never finish, and a flight to Thailand on a credit card without blinking.

Here's what I know now that I didn't know then: women who were never given enough love will often give themselves things instead. Not because they're reckless. Because they are finally, finally saying: I deserve something. Even if it's just this. Even if it's just now.

Was it financially optimal? No. Was it the first time in years I felt like I was choosing myself? Yes.

I'm working on finding the middle. I'll let you know when I get there.

5. I watched the same show for the fourth time.

Not because I forgot what happened. I knew exactly what happened. I watched it because I knew what happened.

Because when your actual life is unpredictable and terrifying and completely unrecognisable, sometimes you need something that will always end the same way. Where you know who the good people are. Where nothing will surprise you at 11pm.

That's not escapism. That's your nervous system choosing safety when reality isn't offering any.

Science agrees with me on this one, by the way. Familiar stimuli reduce cortisol. Your brain isn't being lazy. Your brain is healing.

And then, somehow — I'm still here.

Not fixed. Not finished. Not the graceful phoenix in linen trousers.

But here. Building something real from the wreckage of what I thought my life was supposed to look like.

Some days it looks like courage. Other days it looks like cereal for dinner and a cat on my chest and one more episode of a show I've seen four times.

Both are the story.

Both count.

The question I want to leave you with tonight:

What did you do when things fell apart - that you've never let yourself be proud of?

Because surviving is not a small thing. Even when surviving looked like texting your ex, cancelling the gym, and sleeping till noon.

Especially then.

You're still here. That's the whole point.🪶

From the Ashes She is for the woman in the middle of healing - not after it. If this found you tonight, you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

Full story always in the comments. Come say hi.

rise · believe · fly · @fromtheashesshe