The Story of a Women Who Let Herself Unravel

I was always the one who had it together. I built a life around being dependable, capable, strong. At work, I led teams and delivered results. At home, I was the center of the wheel. The one people leaned on. The one who could handle it.

And for a long time, I loved that. I loved being the person people turned to. I loved feeling needed, respected, in control. But eventually, something inside me whispered that it was time to let go. I didn’t know what that meant. I just knew the structure I had built wasn’t going to hold me anymore.

Walking away from my job wasn’t neat or easy. It was disorienting. Emotional. Messy in all the ways I didn’t expect. I had spent years creating something I was proud of. Letting it go felt like tearing off a layer of my own identity. But that rupture was the beginning of everything.

I did what I always did when things got uncomfortable: I worked. I jumped into consulting. I traveled for business. I filled my schedule and smiled through it all. From the outside, it looked like I had landed on my feet. Like I had figured it out. I liked how that looked. I liked the hustle. But something felt off.

I didn’t feel connected. I couldn’t name what was happening inside me. I started noticing a flutter in my chest, a tightness I couldn’t explain. Stillness felt foreign. I didn’t know how to rest. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know how to stop performing.

Eventually, I attended a retreat. I was hoping for a breakthrough… a big, cinematic moment that would change everything. But when it didn’t happen the way I expected, I thought I had missed the message completely. What I didn’t realize was that the shift was already underway. It just wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet. Subtle. The medicine was working beneath the surface, showing me how to slow down. Teaching me to listen. That was the first lesson. And it would take years for me to fully understand it.

In the months that followed, I chased healing like a high achiever. More retreats. More medicine. More modalities. If I could just do enough, maybe I could fix whatever felt broken. But I was still striving. Still trying to earn a transformation. Still looking outside myself for the answer.

The real turning point came when I started working with a guide. Our work wasn’t about altered states. It was about truth. Reflection. Honesty. She showed me how much of my identity had been wrapped in doing, leading, fixing. I didn’t know how to simply be. I didn’t know how to feel what was real.

That work changed everything. I learned to slow down. To soften. To sit with my fear, my grief, my longing. To look at the shadows I had spent a lifetime avoiding. I began to trust myself in new ways. I stopped outsourcing my knowing. I started listening inward.

And with that listening came something new: curiosity. I wanted to understand what my body had been trying to tell me all along. I had ignored so many signals. The tightness. The exhaustion. Even the moment I knew it was time to leave my job — my body had known before my mind did. I just hadn’t learned how to hear it.

That’s what led me to study somatics. I learned how the body holds patterns. How symptoms carry stories. How true healing requires presence, not performance. I trained as an integrative somatic coach, not to become anyone’s healer, but to sit with people in their own process. To witness without fixing. To support without taking over. To be a steady presence for others as I had learned to be for myself.

Some relationships didn’t survive the changes I made. Some people couldn’t meet me where I was going. That’s been hard. I still miss a few of those connections. But others have grown deeper, stronger, more honest. I’ve found people who hold a mirror to me with love. Who can stay when things are messy. Those friendships are sacred.

Today, I’m not chasing answers. I’m not performing. I’m not trying to prove my worth. I am listening. I am feeling. I am letting life unfold without rushing to control it.

And now, I walk with others as they do the same. Not to lead or rescue or heal — but to witness. To hold space as they remember who they are.

This isn’t the story of a woman who figured it all out. It’s the story of a woman who let herself unravel. Who sat in the unknown. Who found power not in perfection, but in presence.

-Jess L.