She has been running on empty for so long she forgot there was another way to run.

She has been holding everything together — the family, the career, the friendships, the mental load, the appointments, the feelings of everyone around her — while quietly, privately, wondering why she feels so far from herself.

She is capable. Competent. Gets things done. And she is exhausted in a way that a good night’s sleep has stopped fixing.

She reaches for food, for wine, for her phone — not because she wants to, but because she needs something to take the edge off. She lies awake at 3am with a mind that won’t stop. She snaps at the people she loves over something small and then hates herself for it. She cancels plans she was actually looking forward to because she just can’t.

She is not lazy. She is not weak. She is not failing.

She is a woman whose nervous system has been in survival mode for so long that survival has become her normal.

I know, because I was her.
I spent 25 years living in a low hum of anxiety I thought was just my personality. To move through life as though the world was slightly out of focus — a mist of worry keeping everything at a distance, tunnel vision where possibility should be.
I didn’t know there was another way. I couldn’t picture it. You can’t wish for something you don’t know exists.
And then, after my own year of doing the work — of finally putting myself first, properly, for the first time — I stepped onto a plane.
And I just… enjoyed it.
That was the moment I understood what I’d been missing. Not just the flight. Everything. Colour coming back. Mist lifting. Life feeling — for the first time as an adult — like something happening for me rather than to me.
I didn’t know that version of me was waiting. I couldn’t have dreamt her. And now I can’t imagine going back.

That’s what’s on the other side.