The Collapse That Saved Me: My Journey from Burnout to the Soft Life

I was bedridden for months.

Not because of an accident. Not because of a diagnosis I could name at a dinner party and have people nod with understanding.

I was bedridden because my body finally said what I had been too afraid to say for decades: Enough.

Enough of the four jobs worked simultaneously. Enough of the people-pleasing that left me hollow. Enough of providing for everyone while forgetting I was someone worth providing for. Enough of the fight, the survival, the constant state of doing whatever it took to keep everyone else afloat while I drowned quietly.

My body didn't ask. It demanded. And when I didn't listen, it decided for me.

When Everything Caves In

I had spent my entire adult life in motion. Working, caring, providing, fixing. I took care of my sick, narcissistic mother—financially, emotionally, in every way she needed. I housed family members. I paid for everything. I worked myself to the bone because that's what you do when you're the strong one, right? The provider. The one everyone leans on.

I wore my exhaustion like a badge of honor. I thought it made me noble.

What it actually made me was sick.

Too sick to shower. Too sick to feed myself. Too sick to do anything but lie there and face the truth I had been running from: I had no boundaries. I had given everything away—my time, my energy, my presence, my health—and there was nothing left.

My teenage daughter Rose became my caretaker. The girl I had pushed away in my constant state of doing, the daughter I loved fiercely but wasn't present enough for because I was too busy surviving—she showed up for me when I couldn't show up for myself.

She helped me eat. She sat with me. She held space for me in ways I had never held space for myself.

And in those quiet, broken moments, we began to heal together.

The Conversations That Changed Everything

Rose had seen me at my worst. She had lived through my absence even when I was physically there. She knew what it felt like to have a mother who was working so hard to provide that she forgot to be.

We started talking. Really talking. About my childhood abuse. About her childhood with me. About the trauma we both carried. About the wounds I didn't even know I was passing down to her.

Those conversations were sacred. Painful. Necessary.

We cried together. We apologized. We saw each other—truly saw each other—maybe for the first time.

And somewhere in that healing, Allonia Rose was born.

Not as a business plan. Not as a strategy. But as a medicine we both needed. A space for mothers and daughters, for women, to come home to themselves and each other.

The Path to Soft

I had to learn what I had never been taught: that rest is not weakness. That boundaries are not selfish. That saying no is a complete sentence. That my worth is not tied to how much I can carry for other people.

I had to unlearn the belief that love means exhausting yourself.

I had to remember who I was underneath all the roles, all the doing, all the performance of strength.

I had to find my way back to soft.

Not soft as in weak. Soft as in sacred. Soft as in intentional. Soft as in choosing myself without guilt. Soft as in rest, rhythm, and remembering.

The soft life isn't about luxury or indulgence. It's about survival in a different way—sustainable, nourishing, whole.

It's about coming home to yourself after spending years as a stranger in your own body.

The Medicine in the Mess

I look back now at that version of me—bedridden, broken, barely holding on—and I see her with so much tenderness.

She didn't know she was allowed to stop. She didn't know she mattered outside of what she could do for others. She didn't know that the collapse wasn't the end—it was the beginning.

That breakdown became my breakthrough.

It gave me Rose back. It gave me myself back. It gave me a purpose that doesn't deplete me—it fills me.

Now, I hold space for women who are where I was. Burned out. Overwhelmed. Disembodied. Running on empty and wondering why they feel so lost.

I teach them what I had to learn the hard way: that you are allowed to rest. You are allowed to have boundaries. You are allowed to live a soft life even if you've spent decades in fight or flight.

You are allowed to come home to yourself.

To the Woman Reading This

If you're exhausted, I see you.

If you're the one everyone leans on but no one asks if you're okay, I see you.

If you've been running so long you forgot what it feels like to be still, I see you.

If your body is whispering (or screaming) that something has to change, I see you.

Burnout isn't failure. It's your body's way of protecting you from a life that isn't sustainable.

The collapse might feel like the end. But I promise you—it can be the beginning.

The soft life is waiting for you. And so am I.

🤍

Join me in the Soft Hearts Society, where we hold sacred space for women to rest, heal, and remember who they are because you deserve to live softly. You always have.