Why I Am Burning Everything Down To Remember Who I Am
I stopped waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, and I lit that bitch myself.
That sentence has been living in my body for more than a decade. But it wasn't until recently — after a year of massive growth and excruciating pain, after hosting retreats and building community and watching people I loved dump their darkness into my light and then blame me for it — that I finally understood what it actually means.
It means I can't keep waiting for permission. I can't keep waiting for someone else to do something. I can't keep dragging the old version of myself behind me, hoping that one day she'll finally fit again.
It means it's time to finally burn it all down.
The Pattern I Didn't Know I Was Running (Or Did I?)
I'm what we now call a highly sensitive person (HSP). I learned early on that my job was to hold space for everyone else's pain. I learned to read the room before I learned to read myself. I learned that my needs were negotiable. I learned that being good meant being useful, and being useful meant disappearing.
And I got really, really good at it.
So good that people started putting me on a pedestal. The strong one. The one who never falls apart. The lighthouse. And while they leaned on me, needed me, praised me for how much I could carry — nobody thought to ask what it was costing me. Including me.
I didn't even really know I had trauma until I was 40. If you'd asked me, I would've laughed it off and told you my mom raised me with the phrase "deal with it, America." And I did. I dealt with everything. A car accident at age three that kept my nervous system in fight or flight until I was thirty-seven. Insomnia I couldn't explain. A body so sensitive that a strand of hair on my skin felt like torture, overhead lights made my eyes ache, and restaurants overwhelmed every sense I had. I dealt with all of it by becoming the person who didn't need help. The one who held everyone else's stuff so I didn't have to look at my own.
My mom recently admitted that she raised warriors. None of her kids need her. All entrepreneurs, all successful on our own. And she's right — on paper. But I'm sitting here at four in the morning with ringing in my ears and a nervous system still healing from decades of hypervigilance, wondering how I spent so long confusing survival with strength.
How I Ran Myself Over and Called It Love
When you're the strong one, it becomes your whole identity. And identities don't like to die.
I built my entire life around being of service. Brand strategist. Speaker trainer. Retreat host. Community builder. I was equipped with so many gifts that I could do a lot of different things really well — and I used every single one of them to overgive until there was nothing left.
I ran myself over so many times I lost count. And every time I hit the wall, I didn't stop. I just repainted it. Decorated it. Convinced myself it was a different wall entirely. And kept going.
The people closest to me — the ones who said they loved me, who swore they'd do anything for me — couldn't even ask me how I was doing and truly listen. So I got louder. I screamed. I sobbed. And still, few saw me.
I don't fault them. I was the one who taught them I didn't need anything. I was the one who kept holding, kept giving, kept showing up even when I was running on empty. I attracted people who needed more from me than I needed from them, and I saw it from the beginning every single time. But those patterns are stubborn as hell when they got installed that young.
Not all darkness is loud or obvious. Sometimes it looks like being nice when you're being treated badly. It looks like overgiving and swallowing the resentment. It looks like holding space for everyone else's drama while your own body is screaming at you to stop. It looks like feeling something so deep inside yourself that one day you just stop giving a f*ck — not because you don't care, but because caring that much without being cared for in return finally breaks something open.
When The Fire Began
I just recently watched my last f*ck walk out the door. And with it came the clearest thing I've ever felt: I am done dragging my old life behind me.
Not in a dramatic, burn-the-bridges-for-attention way. In a quiet, bone-deep, non-negotiable way.
I finally saw that I wasn't here to run around shining my light for everyone else. I was here to stand in it. There's a difference, and it changes everything.
Running around with my light meant I was exhausted, resentful, invisible, and constantly pouring into people who didn't have the capacity to pour back. Standing in my light means I stop moving. I stop letting others dump on me. I stop saving. I get rooted. And the people who are actually ready — the ones willing to do their own work — find me.
A friend of mine told me once that the darkness is attracted to the light. And I spent years trying to understand why that meant I had to keep absorbing it. But I don't. My job was never to hold the darkness. My job is to be the light. Full stop.
The Identity Detox
So that's what I'm doing. I'm calling it The Reclamation and I'm doing a full identity detox. It's the first phase of what I'm building next.
This means stripping away every version of myself that was built for someone else's comfort. The caretaker. The fixer. The one who's always fine. The warrior who needs no one. Every pattern of people pleasing, every flavor of codependence, every wall I repainted instead of walking away from.
It means asking hard questions about who I've allowed into my life and why. It means removing people who put me on a pedestal so they could dump at my feet. It means no longer being available for the abuse, the gaslighting, the lying, the gossiping — all the things I once tolerated because I cared more about other people than I cared about what they thought of me.
And it means stepping fully into the woman I know I'm meant to be. A medicine woman. A guide. An intuitive. Someone who helps others find their purpose, their calling, their gifts — not by carrying them there, but by standing so firmly in my own that they remember how to find theirs.
I'm not sharing this because I have it all figured out. I'm sharing this because I'm in it right now. The burning. The shedding. The terrifying, exhilarating, no-turning-back dismantling of everything I thought I was.
I know this is going to be squishy for a while. I know some people will read this and decide I've lost it. I know the people who needed me to stay small will be the loudest critics.
But I also know that every time I've stepped more fully into myself, I've lit the path for someone else to do the same. And I'm not willing to dim that anymore.
Come With Me
This is the first domino. The Reclamation has begun.
If you've felt that pull — the exhaustion of performing, the resentment of overgiving, the quiet knowing that you've been dragging an old version of yourself that doesn't fit anymore — then you already know what I'm talking about.
I'm going to be sharing this journey as it happens. The messy parts. The real parts. The parts that scare me. Because I'm done waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel.
I have officially lit that bitch myself.
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