It’s been over a month since I’ve written here. A month that began with me turning 40—a milestone I’d been looking forward to with an optimism I hadn’t felt in years. I was ready to start a new decade. Ready to step into something different.
And then I got sick.
Not just a cold. Seriously, knock-me-flat-for-over-a-week sick. The kind of sick that doesn’t just drain your body but empties out your mental and emotional reserves too. I joked darkly to friends that I felt like a washing machine whose warranty had just expired—like the universe waited until I hit 40 to let all my belts and bolts start giving out.
But it wasn’t funny. It was a wake-up call.
When I tried to push myself back to “normal” too quickly, my body pushed back harder. I regressed. The message was clear: slow down. Rest. Take care of yourself. Go to the doctor. Get diagnostics. Stop pretending you can power through.
And that was just the beginning.
While I was still recovering, my workplace—a place that had been a healing and safe space for almost a year—underwent sudden personnel changes. The kind of changes that make you hold your breath and wonder if everything is about to shift beneath your feet. After leaving a previous job where I was overworked, undervalued, and ultimately so burned out that I suffered frequent, debilitating panic attacks, I’d found refuge in this new position. I’d found stability. Safety. A place where my work mattered.
Now? I’m uncertain about the future. I’m watching team morale shift. As an empath, I don’t just feel my own stress—I absorb the suffering around me. And the fear creeps in: What if this becomes the same situation I left? What if I end up back in that place where the stress was so severe I had to take medical leave just to regulate my nervous system?
I’ve never thought of myself as a quitter. But my therapist reminds me: setting boundaries isn’t quitting. Protecting yourself isn’t weakness. I’m exploring alternatives, even though part of me hates that I have to.
All of this—the illness, the workplace uncertainty, the weight of turning 40 in the middle of chaos—it happened at once. And somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped writing.
At first, I called it stress. Life happened. I got busy. I’d get back to it.
Then the weeks stretched on, and the guilt settled in like fog.
the albatross
You know that feeling when you don’t immediately respond to an email or text, and then enough time passes that responding feels almost worse than not responding at all? So you just… don’t. And it sits there. Every time you open your inbox or your phone, there it is—this silent, nagging reminder of your failure.
That was this blog for me. My personal albatross.
I thought about it daily. I wanted to write. I missed writing. But the more time passed, the heavier the guilt became, and the harder it was to just come back and pick up where I left off. Despite having several very good reasons for stepping away, I knew this had become more than just life getting in the way.
Then, recently, two newsletters from the Arizona Trauma Institute landed in my inbox at exactly the right moment.
The first asked a question that stopped me cold: Is this feeling a reaction to a present threat, or an echo of an old wound?
The second reminded me that consent begins as a conversation with our own body—that sometimes “not now” is wisdom, not weakness. That our bodies give us early cues to protect our capacity and our relationships. Jaw tight. Shoulders raised. Breath thin. These aren’t character flaws. They’re information.
And suddenly, I understood.
This Wasn’t Procrastination
My body had been saying “not yet” for weeks. Between the physical illness, the workplace upheaval, and the emotional weight of all of it, my nervous system was already full. Writing about trauma, advocacy, and healing—work that requires me to stay present and emotionally regulated—needed more than I had to give.
The guilt I felt? That was me dismissing my body’s wisdom as a personal failure.
There’s something painfully ironic about pursuing certification as a victim advocate—learning to hold space for others’ trauma—while ignoring my own body’s clear signals. At my last job, I ignored those signals until I was having panic attacks severe enough to require medical leave. Even then, the symptoms returned the moment I went back to the office. I never want to find myself in that situation again.
So when my body said “not yet” this time, maybe—just maybe—I was finally learning to listen.
Why I’m Back Now
I’m not going to pretend I figured it all out or that I’ve reached some zen state of self-awareness. I’m back because I wanted to come back. Desperately. And this post is me being honest about why I left.
This is a personal blog. I don’t mind getting personal about what’s behind the cyber curtain. I want to be transparent—not just about the work I’m doing toward advocacy, but about the messy, non-linear reality of healing while trying to help others heal.
Two things finally gave me the momentum to return:
First, I heard back from the Center for Community Solutions about volunteering for their Sexual Assault Response Team. This is a big step—working directly with victims, gaining real experience in the advocacy field. It’s exactly the kind of work I’ve been preparing for.
Second, the Pathways in Victim Services training seminar is back! After the government shutdown ended, the classes were rescheduled. Knowing I’ll be returning to that learning, that community, that forward motion—it reminded me why I started this blog in the first place.
The Lesson I’m Still Learning
The work of healing doesn’t follow a content calendar. It doesn’t care about consistency metrics or guilt spirals or the voice in your head that says you should be further along by now.
I’m learning (again, and probably not for the last time) that returning to this work doesn’t require pushing through. It requires listening. It requires trusting that when I have capacity again, the words will come—and they’ll be better for the waiting.
I’m still here. Still learning. Still healing. Still becoming a victim advocate while learning to advocate for myself first. Just at the pace my body can actually sustain.
If you’re reading this and feeling guilty about your own pauses—your own “not yets”—maybe this is your permission slip too. Maybe your body has been waving red flags that you’ve been calling “stress” or “laziness” or “just getting old.”
Your nervous system is listening. What does it need you to finally acknowledge?
I’m glad to be back. Not because I conquered anything, but because I’m finally ready to show up again—on my terms, at my pace, with honesty about what it takes to keep going.
Thank you for still being here.