Menopause didn't quietly arrive in my life—it crashed into it like a freight train.

One day, my body no longer felt like my own. I remember the relentless waves of heat, as though I was living inside an MRI machine that never shut off. But the physical symptoms were only the beginning.

At the very same time, my teenage daughter was pregnant, unemployed, and determined not to move in with me despite desperately needing support. My relationship with my parents was deteriorating faster than I could process, and teaching had become emotionally exhausting as I struggled in a classroom filled with increasingly volatile students and very little administrative support.

To say life was unraveling would be an understatement.

Like many women, I hoped hormone replacement therapy and a low-dose antidepressant would be enough to steady the ground beneath me. I wanted to believe they would fix everything.

They didn't.

The darkness became so overwhelming that I reached a point where I genuinely believed the world might be better without me. It is difficult to admit that now, but it is the truth. And I know I am not the only woman who has silently stood on that terrifying edge.

Then something changed.

I found an extraordinary therapist whose work centered on Jungian shadow work. She didn't promise quick fixes or easy answers. Instead, she gently helped me face the parts of myself I had spent a lifetime avoiding.

Healing didn't happen overnight.

It wasn't dramatic.

It wasn't pretty.

It happened one painfully small step at a time.

Slowly—that is the important word.

Around the same time, my relationship with a man I cared deeply about came to an end. The reality was simple: he neither had the time nor the emotional capacity to walk through that season of life with me. As painful as it was, I don't blame him.
Sometimes people simply cannot carry what isn't theirs to carry.

Then I made one decision that changed everything.

I moved out.

Almost immediately, it felt as though nearly 80 percent of the chaos, sadness, and emotional weight disappeared. I remember thinking, Is this what peace feels like?
It felt nothing short of miraculous.

I didn't overanalyze it.

I embraced it.

Approaching fifty, I stepped back into the dating world—a prospect that felt equal parts exciting and terrifying. But this time, something inside me had changed.
A quiet voice I'd never truly listened to before finally spoke.
"Establish deal breakers."

So I did.

And let me tell you something...

Deal breakers work.

For the first time in decades, I stopped measuring my worth through someone else's approval. I stopped criticizing every reflection staring back at me. The woman I had spent years judging, rejecting, and trying to fix slowly became someone I could respect.

Then something even more unexpected happened.

I began to like her.

Not because my life had become perfect.

Not because the pain magically disappeared.

But because I had survived it.

After decades of self-loathing, impossible expectations, and feeling trapped in the quicksand of sadness, I finally discovered the one person I had been searching for all along.

Myself.
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And she was worth fighting for.

Being who I am today comes easily—for the most part. It wasn't always that way.
There was a time when I felt as though I was slowly losing my grip on reality. It wasn't a dramatic collapse, but a gradual unraveling that left me questioning everything I thought I knew about myself. The onset of menopause intensified those feelings, but the greatest catalyst for change came when I made the painful decision to put a great deal of distance between myself and my parents.
Looking back now, I realize that my journey toward understanding myself was born out of survival.
I grew up in a profoundly dysfunctional home. One parent embodied narcissism, intimidation, and physical violence. The other struggled with severe alcoholism. To this day, I truly believe that the fact my brother, sister, and I survived our childhood—both physically and emotionally—is nothing short of divine intervention.
Long before I understood what any of it meant, I experienced the world differently than those around me.
As a child, my dreams were incredibly vivid. They weren't just dreams; they were experiences. Everything was in brilliant color. I could feel the texture of objects, smell the air around me, and sometimes even experience physical sensations as though I were truly there. I assumed everyone dreamed this way. I certainly didn't think I was unique.
I also knew better than to tell my parents. In our home, being different often meant being ridiculed or accused of lying, and that was a price I wasn't willing to pay.
I was also deeply empathetic. I felt everything.
If I saw someone suffering—even in a movie—I absorbed their pain as if it were my own. I vividly remember watching a television version of Mary, Queen of Scots. Her suffering affected me so profoundly that I carried the sadness for days afterward. At the time, I didn't understand why I reacted so intensely. I simply believed there was something wrong with me.
My father, whom I now refer to simply as Richard—and in time you'll understand why—was not a loving man. He seemed to take pleasure in belittling his children. His infamous words, "I'll give you something to cry about," were never an empty threat. They were often followed by violence.
So I learned to hide.
I hid my tears.
I hid my fears.
And I hid the part of me that seemed to experience life so much more deeply than everyone else.
My teenage years became four long years spent in survival mode. My mother's alcoholism had spiraled completely out of control, and my father remained emotionally absent unless someone interrupted the world he had created for himself. Then his anger would erupt.
During my first year of community college, my mother entered a residential treatment program. It wasn't her first attempt at recovery, and sadly, it wouldn't be her last.
Through all of this, the experiences never stopped.
The vivid dreams continued.
Shadows darted just beyond my peripheral vision.
I experienced a terrifying paranormal event while lying awake in my grandmother's home—an experience I would never forget.
And I continued to feel the emotions of other people with an intensity I couldn't explain.
At that point in my life, I wasn't searching for spiritual answers. I wasn't trying to understand psychic abilities or mediumship.
I had only one goal.
Save enough money to leave that house.
I believed that if I could escape my childhood, I could finally escape the fear that had defined it.
I had no idea that leaving home would only be the beginning of discovering who I truly was.