When Life Cracks You Open: Finding What You Love in the Breaking

A reflection on a first conversation

She came to me looking for stability.

Two curve balls had landed in rapid succession: her best friend died suddenly, and she lost her job. The ground beneath her—the ground she thought was solid—had given way.

She wanted help finding a new position. She was tired of the instability, the uncertainty, the feeling that life was against her.

I understood. Of course, she felt that way.

But I also saw something else.

Life Isn't Against You—It's Breaking You Open

When everything falls apart at once, it's natural to feel like life is punishing you, testing you, or simply being cruel.

But what if these moments aren't life working against you?

What if they're life working for you?

Not in some spiritual bypass way that dismisses the pain. The grief is real. The fear is real. The instability is deeply uncomfortable.

And yet—there's something happening beneath the surface.

Life is cracking you open.

The Myth of Stability

Here's what I've learned in my decades of coaching and my own journey through crisis: we spend so much energy trying to create stability in a fundamentally unstable world.

I learned this the hard way. When I was a sales executive in tech, I had all the external markers of stability—the title, the income, the success. But inside, I was running 100 miles an hour, freaking out about money, feeling like a fraud. The very things I thought would make me feel secure were the things breaking me open.

That breaking was the beginning of my real life.

We believe if we just get the right job, the right relationship, the right amount of money in the bank, then we'll feel secure.

But life is unstable. That is its nature.

The waves keep coming. Change is the only constant. No amount of control or planning can stop that.

When we finally accept this—truly accept it—something shifts.

We stop fighting the waves and learn to ride them.

Think of a surfer. They don't demand the ocean be calm. They don't try to control the waves. They study the water, feel its rhythm, and move with it. The same wave that could drown someone who's fighting it can carry someone who knows how to ride it.

That's what I saw in this first conversation: someone who'd been knocked off her board by two massive waves. And beneath her exhaustion, I could sense the possibility—that she could learn not just to survive the waves, but to ride them.

We stop bracing against life and start moving with it.

We find grace and ease not despite the instability, but within it.

Grief Lives Where Love Lives

As we sat together in that first conversation, I saw something beautiful emerging through her pain.

Her grief for her friend wasn't just loss—it was love made visible.

I could feel it in the room—the depth of her caring, the quality of the friendship she'd had. This wasn't someone who lives on the surface. This was someone who knows how to love deeply.

We only grieve what matters. We only ache for what we've truly cared about.

Her grief was showing her something essential: she knows how to love.

And I found myself wondering: what if that capacity—to care deeply, to be moved, to let things matter—could become her compass?

Not just for finding a new job.

For finding what she loves to do.

The Invitation Hidden in Crisis

When life takes away what we thought we needed, it creates space.

Space to ask different questions:

• What do I actually love?

• What matters most to me?

• If I could design my work around what I care about, what would that look like?

• Who do I want to become through this?

This isn't about ignoring the practical need for income or the reality of bills to pay.

It's about recognizing that this moment—as painful as it is—is also an opportunity.

An opportunity to return to what's essential.

An opportunity to let your love lead.

Returning to the Art

There's an art to living that we forget when we're running at full speed, when we're busy proving ourselves, when we're trying to hold everything together.

The art of listening to what calls to us.

The art of following what brings us alive.

The art of building a life—and a career—from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.

Crisis doesn't just break us. It can also break us open.

Open to wisdom we couldn't access when everything felt secure.

Open to parts of ourselves we'd forgotten or ignored.

Open to possibilities we couldn't see when we were gripping so tightly to what we had.

What Might Unfold

In that first conversation, she came tired of instability, wanting to find solid ground again.

What she might discover—if we work together—is something more valuable than stability: sovereignty.

The ability to meet life as it is—waves and all—and navigate from her own center, her own truth, her own love.

I don't know yet what will unfold for her. That's not for me to know.

But I do know this: when we stop running from life's instability and start riding its waves, we discover we're far more resilient than we knew.

When we let our grief show us what we love, we find our compass pointing toward work that actually matters to us.

When we stop trying to return to how things were and start asking what wants to emerge, we become artists of our own lives.

The breaking is painful. It's also sacred.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing that happens in a first conversation is simply this: someone sees the invitation hidden in your pain, and reflects it back to you.

The Questions That Change Everything

If you're in a time of breaking—whether through loss, transition, or crisis—these questions might serve you:

What do I love?

Not what should you love, or what you used to love, or what would impress others. What actually moves you, right now? What makes you come alive?

What's trying to emerge?

When the old falls away, what whispers are you hearing? What's been waiting for space to reveal itself?

What if this is happening for me, not to me?

How does the story change when you see this as an opening rather than an ending?

Who do I want to become through this?

Not who you were before this happened. Who is this experience inviting you to become?

Living the Questions

You don't need to have answers right away.

In fact, the answers that come too quickly are often just the old patterns dressed up as new solutions.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is live inside the questions.

Let them work on us.

Let the breaking open be a slow, sacred process.

Let our love—made visible through our grief—show us the way forward.

If you're navigating loss, transition, or the feeling that life has thrown you a curve ball, I'd be honored to sit with you. This work isn't about fixing you or rushing you through your pain. It's about helping you see what's trying to emerge, reconnect with what you love, and find your way forward from the inside out.

Our first conversation is complimentary—just space to explore what's alive for you and whether this work feels right. Schedule your call here.