I Cried in My Car Today
And I Know I’m Not the Only One
There are days when the weight of being a person feels unbearable.
You wake up already exhausted, before the emails, before the headlines, before the needs of everyone else start screaming louder than your own. You try to move through the day like normal, but there’s a pressure building behind your chest. And at some point, maybe between back-to-back meetings, or after checking your bank account, or reading yet another horrifying news update, you break.
Quietly. Alone. In a car. In the bathroom. In your head.
Today, that was me.
I sat in my car and cried so hard I lost track of time. Not over one thing, but over all of it. The everything-ness of life right now. The grief that doesn’t have a name. The rage that has nowhere to land. The exhaustion that feels cellular. Financial stress. The world on fire. The sense that no matter how hard I try, I’m still not there, wherever “there” is supposed to be.
And the worst part? I didn’t even feel like I had the luxury of falling apart. There’s still dinner to make. Messages to return. Things to write. People to show up for. I’m supposed to be building an empire. I’m supposed to be strong. And I am. But I’m also something else right now: tired of pretending I’m okay when I’m not.
If you’re in that space too, I don’t have a fix. But I do have this:
You are not broken because you’re breaking down.
Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is admit you're at capacity.
Sometimes your strength is knowing when to stop. When to be soft. When to let it all fall out of your chest so you can breathe again.
I think we underestimate how much we’re holding. The generational weight. The personal expectations. The pressure to keep performing wellness when what we really want is to just disappear for a while. Not forever. Just long enough to come back to ourselves.
Maybe that’s what this season is asking of us—not to rise, not to run, not to solve, but to sit with the parts of ourselves we usually skip over. The sad parts. The scared parts. The parts that don’t know how to keep going, but get up anyway.
I don’t know if this ends with a breakthrough or a breakdown. But I do know this: I don’t want to abandon myself in the name of holding it all together. Not today.
If the world feels too heavy, set it down for a while. If your soul feels tired, let it rest—even if the rest is ragged. You’re allowed to fall apart and still be holy. You’re allowed to not be okay and still be whole.
If this resonated…
You’d probably love my book, Self-Help-ish—a real one’s guide to navigating wellness, burnout, boundaries, and the mess of modern life.