Everything Cracked, Including Me

What grief, trauma, and nature taught me about falling apart and beginning again

With each step, the ground cracked not like freshly fallen snow, but rather the kind that has melted and refrozen over and over. I walked down the empty path toward the water, toward the sunrise.The enlightened part of me wanted to settle in, to drink in the beautiful view and this opportunity I’d been given to spend a week in the Berkshires. I longed to soak in the healing quiet of nature in the winter and experience my grief in community with other grieving strangers. But my body had other plans.

So, when my eyes cracked open, alert before sunrise, I put on my boots, tucked my journal into my long winter jacket, and set out to find the middle ground.

As I stood looking out over the frozen lake, a long, drawn-out sound rang out as the ice cracked. Little did I know that just a few days later, so would I.

I fled the campus on day three. My body couldn’t tolerate being indoors. I was hopeful that spending the afternoon wandering the nearby woods at Edith Wharton’s estate and writing would ground me enough to re-engage later on that night. I wandered the snow-filled woods alone, talking out loud to no one other than the creaking trees-negotiating whether I should stay or leave, navigating that familiar tension: what is anxiety and what is intuition?

A wrong step into a hidden hole snapped me back to the present as my ankle throbbed. I hobbled back to the car and called a friend–still unable to honor my own needs without someone’s permission. I hoped she would tell me what to do. To her credit, she didn’t.

So I sat for hours in the lobby with my bags packed, until I let the clock make the decision. If I was going to head home– it had to be now, I couldn’t kick the dog sitters out in the middle of the night.

I hastily wrote a message with too much detail, sent it to the presenters and left quietly.

Looking back this picture from the woods that day, I can’t help but see arms reaching or a fork in the road. Both seem very appropriate.

My body shivered the whole drive home–partly because of the weak heat in my dead mom’s black Jeep Wrangler, but mostly because I was slipping. This was the first time, my childhood home–now mine–felt like safety. It was a relief, and a massive red flag.

Two and a half hours later, I walked through the back door, greeted the dogs, unpacked, and got into bed.

The next morning, I woke up motivated — my nervous system pushing past my window of tolerance and smashing into the hyperarousal that helped me survive for so long.

I was AWAKE. I had business visions. I knew what grievers needed and it was my job to bring it into the world. And then, I found myself in my childhood bedroom, screaming into a pillow and scrawling into my journal:

I’m angry, and I’m sad, and I fucking hate this with every ounce of my being.
How the actual fuck did I end up here? I’m a girl with a massive heart who is intelligent and beautiful, and I’m crushed because I should be in the world doing amazing fucking things — but instead, here I am, scraping for my survival every freaking day.

I didn’t ask for any of this, and that’s been the story of my whole life. One thing after another. Just when I feel like I have my footing underneath me, another blow is dealt. Yet here I am, still believing that living, and loving, and appreciating beauty and excellence is possible. I didn’t even recognize my own grit and strength until I was in the room this week. I could be dead, and no one would blame me. People have tapped out for way less.

I just want to live.

I just want to live.

I just want to live.

And I hate that it takes so much effort and energy to do that — alone.

Because I suppose the truth is, I want to do more than just live.
I want to be the phoenix. I want to rise from this. I want to love deeply. I want to fall in love. I want to build my own life. And it seems so far away when I’m here, just trying to feed myself.

It feels so unfair. This has been the story of my life. And yet, here I am. Every day. Trying.

I cracked— just like the ice on that pond. It took 34 years, but it happened. Not long after, I found myself physically frozen on my living room floor after daring to speak my truth. After daring to want.

And this time, I couldn’t thaw alone.

I had to reach.

For my phone, to text a friend whose steady voice was enough to get me into bed.

For my keys the next morning, to drive to someone who could hold me until my body slowly came back to the present.

For the medication, to give me the rest I needed.

That freeze-and-thaw cycle continued for months. My body kept pulling me into the past, even when my mind knew I was in the present.

The exhaustion I felt after my brother died showed up again. So did the heart-racing panic from the parking garage at Massachusetts General Hospital, waiting to hear if my mom would survive surgery—and terrified of what it would take to keep her alive if she did.

Smaller, seemingly inconsequential moments came too.

My angry, unseen college self reappeared while talking to an old friend.

My 13-year-old self flooded back when a Disney movie trailer played on my TV.

I was being violently turned inside out.

I frantically, shamefully poured these moments into ChatGPT and my therapist’s ears, searching for words, for understanding—desperately trying to make it stop.

CPTSD was the label that technically fit. But what was an emotional flashback? What was a panic attack? What could I do to make it all stop? I wanted answers. But there weren’t any — except to meet myself in each moment, and allow the cracking, the thawing.

And the more I allowed, the more I reclaimed.

Because with each dark night, each new file folder my brain opened and reorganized, came more clarity. More ownership over what is authentically me.

This is the part of healing that feels hard to explain—maybe it’s not meant to be. But for every person I’ve judged in the past for turning their life inside out over and over on a dime, I now wonder: What did their freezing and thawing look like?

A part of me is terrified, because I know this won’t be the last season of this cycle.

To live an embodied life demands it.

And yet, as I remind myself to come back to now–

I can’t help but be excited to see what blooms this summer in this fertile well tilled soil.

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