A Year Ago, I Was Done... But Life Wasn’t Done With Me

The Night Everything Broke Open

A year ago this month, I hit a wall that I truly believed I wouldn’t come back from.

I had been fighting my body and my mind for so long (PMDD, medication side effects, exhaustion) that I reached a point where I couldn’t see a way forward.

That night, I said goodbye in the only way I knew how. I thought I was protecting the people around me from my pain, not realizing that the act of sending my daughter my goodbye letter would be the thing that kept me here. Her response, and my family’s, snapped me awake.

It was humiliating, disorienting, and holy all at once. It forced me to see just how deep the suffering had gone—and that I didn’t actually want to die; I wanted the pain to.

That was the moment I drew a new line: “Enough.”

Enough numbing, enough masking, enough believing my body was my enemy.

From that moment on, I committed to finding another way to live—to heal, not escape.

A year ago this month, I was completely checked out.

My body was exhausted, my hormones were a mess, and my mind was running on fumes.

I was drowning in PMDD, juggling medication after medication, and convinced that something inside me was broken beyond repair.

I remember thinking: “I quit drinking. I did the work. So why do I still feel like this?”

I had reached a point of total surrender. Where peace felt like giving up, not healing.

What I didn’t know then was that the moment I said “I can’t do this anymore” was actually the moment my soul whispered back, “Then let’s do it differently.”

That whisper became the beginning of my healing.

It didn’t happen overnight. There were hospital visits, medication changes, and moments of deep shame and fear. But somewhere in that chaos, I decided to stop outsourcing my wellness to a handful of prescriptions and start listening to my own body—the vessel God gave me to navigate this life.

I realized that healing isn’t about fixing what’s wrong—it’s about finally hearing what’s been silenced.

Through meditation, energy work, and hypnotherapy, I began to peel back the layers.

I learned that my emotions weren’t my enemies—they were my body’s language.

That pain, anxiety, and burnout weren’t punishments—they were messages from my higher self saying, “Please, come home.”

And slowly, I did.

Over the past year, I’ve come off nearly all my medications, found a sustainable rhythm with the small amount I still take, and built an entirely new relationship with myself.

I launched my business, Your Inner Light; Healing & Wellness, LLC, not because I have it all figured out, but because I now understand the assignment:

To help others see that they are not broken.

To remind people that their body, their mind, and their spirit are divinely designed to work together. And to guide others back into alignment.

And that there is always another way—a gentler, truer way—to heal.

If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re at the edge, please know: The part of you that wants to give up isn’t weak—it’s the part that’s tired of pretending.

There is hope.

There is help.

And there is a version of you waiting to be met on the other side of surrender.

You are not alone. You never were.

This is your sign to pause, breathe, and choose to begin again.

Love always,

Michele