Screaming Into the Void: Living in the Middle of Transformation
The middle feels like screaming into a void.
When my nursing identity collapsed and the roles of wife and mother no longer defined me, I was left with an aching question:
Who am I without all of this? Who am I without my career, my spirituality, my partner, my education, or my children? Who am I when it’s just me — Cheryl?
That question is still one I’m living. It’s existential, disorienting, and lonely. Therapists can’t answer it. Friends can’t fix it. Love can’t rescue you from it.
Living in the middle is an independent, often invisible experience — and it’s the part of transformation almost nobody talks about.
2023: The Awakening Begins
My spiritual awakening began in 2023. It wasn’t lightning-bolt clarity. It was unraveling.
Piece by piece, my ego was stripped away. Patterns I had ignored came into focus. Truths I’d avoided confronted me head-on.
It was messy, disorienting, and yet strangely sacred. There were flashes of clarity, moments of recognition that whispered: the life I built is not the life I’m meant to stay in.
That was the first crack in my old identity.
2024: Leaving My Career
In 2024, I left nursing — the career I had trained for, hustled in, and burned out from. Relief washed over me at first. I thought: This is it. I finally get to be with my kids after missing so much.
But reality hit quickly. Homeschooling two little boys was repetitive, exhausting, and often unrewarding. Days blurred together. My identity dissolved further.
There was freedom — freedom from the grind, freedom from a system that no longer fit. But alongside it came boredom, shame, and guilt.
This is the paradox of the middle: joy and despair, freedom and monotony, relief and confusion — all coexisting at once.
2025: Family Collapse & Grief
By 2025, the “middle” deepened. On July 4th, a rupture with my father cracked open everything I had been carrying.
It wasn’t just about him. It was about decades of emotional neglect, of never quite being chosen, of black sheep moments that shaped me. A childhood memory still stings: making the volleyball team while my sister made hers too — but my parents refused to pay for mine. Why let me try out if they never intended to believe in me?
As an adult, it repeated. Vacations taken without me. Family ties woven tightly around others but loosely, conditionally around me.
The rupture forced me to stop pretending. I grieved not just my father, but the family I wished I had. The family I never fully belonged to.
It was the lowest point — what I now call my “quarter-long depression sabbatical.” I stood in a pit of grief, naked and unseen. And no therapist, no friend, no medication, and no husband could pull me out. The work of the middle was mine alone.
Why the Middle Feels Like a Pit
The middle magnifies every shadow:
- Impatience — the ache to know the outcome now.
- Scarcity — fear there won’t be enough (money, love, belonging).
- Shame — guilt for not “doing enough” as a mom or partner.
- Oversharing — reaching for validation when no one could fix it.
And yet, bypassing doesn’t work. Pretending I wasn’t in the pit only made the pit deeper.
The middle asks you to wait. To look at what no longer fits. To see shadows clearly, even when it hurts.
The Gifts of the Middle
Slowly, gifts surfaced in the cracks:
- Patience — not forced, but chosen.
- Creativity — bubbling through journaling, voice notes, astrology, and Human Design.
- Resilience — proof I could survive what I thought would break me.
- Self-value — learning to find worth outside of roles or validation.
The middle wasn’t wasted time. It was initiation.
Living in the middle feels holy now — sacred ground where the old identity dissolves and the new one begins to take root.
How I Began to Climb Out
There wasn’t one dramatic leap. Just small, steady choices:
- Seeking therapy (and saying yes to medication when needed).
- Couples counseling with Matt to re-learn connection & heal past wounds.
- Journaling daily to untangle thoughts.
- Nervous system work — breath, grounding, learning what safety felt like in my body.
- Shadow work — naming old beliefs so I could release them.
It wasn’t a fix. It was a slow rebuild.
The Sacredness of the Middle
Here’s the truth: the middle is sacred.
It strips you bare so you can remember your essence. It holds you long enough for patience to become a practice. It demands that you choose presence over distraction, alignment over avoidance.
It’s not failure. It’s not wasted time. It’s where resilience is born, where new identities seed, and where your soul whispers: wait, trust, rebuild.
Closing Reflection
We’re all living in the middle of something. Maybe burnout. Maybe grief. Maybe identity collapse.
The middle is lonely, yes. Scary, yes. But it’s also where transformation happens.
If you’re there right now, I see you. You’re not broken. You’re not alone. The middle is not a void to escape — it is the birthplace of who you’re becoming.
✨ If you’re ready to navigate your middle with more grace, start here: Unmasked Journal Prompt Guide Freebie.
Are you curious about your own soul path? Take the quiz to discover your Soul Path Number.
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August 29, 2025
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