My New Word is Collapse

How in the hell do we recover from collapse? This was the question I asked myself last night at 1 AM. I was laying awake, digesting the latest episode of Stranger Things and realized that I have been through the ringer in the last year. It’s impacted my ability to manifest my greatest dreams, my biggest goals, my largest life.

Obviously, this is not a tragedy contest. Your pain is equal to mine; your loss no less than mine. We’ve all been living with COVID-19. I speak specifically of the last year of my life where everything I planned out just… fell apart. Everything I set out to do, be, and have just did not come to fruition in the way I dreamed, if at all. Everything just… collapsed.

Let me explain. Little over a year ago, 2021, I left my 15+ year career in telecom and IT to pursue Jewish nonprofit work in another state. I bought my first home (yes, during a pandemic and a terrible housing shortage), left my two older kids (due to court custody issues), and moved across the country in hopes of starting a new fresh chapter with a winning court outcome only a couple months away. I was wrong on literally all counts.

We bought the house and love it but… There’s stuff wrong we didn’t know to look for, despite numerous inspections by brilliant qualified people. We live on a noisy dangerous intersection that we did not foresee. We have zero Jewish neighbors and it’s too far to walk to shul. So it’s a nice house and neighborhood with drawbacks that are becoming less and less tolerable every day.

We live in the same city as all of my husband’s family, like all of them, and yet only his parents have bothered building connections with us. The rest of the siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins just don’t give a shit, haven’t reached out, and are uninterested in building relationships with us.

My career in Jewish nonprofit blew up in my face due to systemic misogyny and bigotry and terrible leadership, not once but twice. Seriously. And people I know actually knew I’d run into it and didn’t warn me. It led to severe health issues for me. FFS.

My custody case for my two sons, where I could have them most of the year and their dad would have them holidays, which we were so confident we’d win… we lost. My partner and I were devastated. So now, instead of every other week as it had been for seven years, I get them 12 weeks a year out of 52. Yes. Their father has them 40 weeks. I have them 12. I get them 20% of the year!

And to add insult to injury, I now owe a huge child support payment (larger than most car payments) every month despite never having paid a penny in seven years (though I did pay 100% their healthcare, insurance, dental, travel, private tuition, etc.) Talk about devastation.

The court case was the hardest nail in the coffin for me. It was so hard, I didn’t even realize how deeply it’s impacted me until now. The kids are scarred. We’re scarred. Financially, we’re struggling. My husband had to leave his PHD program to pursue work full time just to cover child support. My stress levels went up and up and up.

I ended up with GERD. I’m on meds for it now. I ended up with my hair falling out. I ended up with horrible panic attacks that I had not experienced in almost a decade. I have been living in a subtle state of dread and sorrow, despite the joys and successes of the past year.

The only word that encompasses these terrible tragic losses is collapse. So I asked myself last night at 1AM, “How the hell do people recover after their lives collapse?”

I mean, it’s the million dollar question, right? How do we recover? How do we begin again? How do we face the day, the goal, the dream, the hope when hope has been taken away?

Thankfully, I planted the seed of the question last night and have woken with answers.

Turns out, I don’t need to figure it out, I just need to Google it. In other words, the answers are already out there, in print, in practice, in action. I am absolutely not the first person to experience a huge life collapse and live to tell the tale. All I have to do is read and learn. The best part? I have books on my shelves right now with instructions.

• The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
• Abundance Now by Lisa Nichols
• Notes from a Friend by Tony Robbins
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

I have to be willing to sit down and face this pain. I have been unwilling to sit in it very long for the last six months. I have been unwilling to linger in the discomfort, to wait for it to pass, to learn the wisdom that lies on the other side.

Not anymore.

I need to learn from our ancestors. I am seeking the knowledge of how exactly to pivot, what exactly to think, what specifically to tell myself when the sorrow tries to both pull me down and freeze me in my tracks.

How do I recover from collapse? Oddly enough, I already know, I think. My life blew up, completely, nine years ago and I rebuilt from nothing.

I went from obese, suicidal, broke, disconnected from my children, hating my marriage, miserable in my job, and trapped in a life I hated to losing 50 pounds, getting divorced, affording a new car, getting my own apartment for the first time ever, getting a promotion, and rebuilding a healthier honest relationship with my children.

It began my career as a life coach. It led to my incredible achievements: becoming a published author, becoming a podcaster, becoming a rising Kohenet, getting trained to lead Red Tent, helping dozens of clients succeed in communication, advocating for the LGBTQ employees at my corporation, and many other wins.

Caterpillars completely collapse in order to metamorphosize. And they still remember everything they used to be. And then they grow wings and fly away from the life they used to have.

I can too.