You're not having a crisis - you are having a remembering
It does not feel like clarity. It feels like falling apart. But what is happening to you right now is something very different – and it has a completely different meaning.
That feeling of disconnect doesn’t announce itself - it just shows up one day. Subtle at first. A feeling that something is off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You don’t know where it came from or why, it’s just there.
You might dismiss it at first, you’re busy running your life after all. Until it comes back, sitting there in the back of your mind like an uninvited guest refusing to leave. Nagging. Confusing. Irritating.
All of a sudden, you start to question things. The life you worked so hard to build doesn’t feel right anymore. You’re strangely engrossed, like you were dropped into someone else’s reality. Like a stranger looking in. People start noticing that something’s going on with you, but you can’t even explain what it is. Things just don’t make sense anymore. Your life doesn’t make sense anymore. Everything seems to be falling apart, and you start asking yourself: Is this really it?
The day I could not “see” anymore
I remember the day I went blind, not literally but mentally. Since I was a child, I have perceived my world in images, still and moving. I used to be the girl daydreaming, imagining being someone else, fully immersing myself in other worlds.
Even today, when I think of anything - and if it’s just how to get from A to B, I have to “see” it. This is how I make sense of the world. I never knew any other way.
There I was, sitting in my office, running a busy PR & Marketing department of a large hotel in Dubai. The department was terribly understaffed, and I was producing material like a factory. I knew it was the wrong thing to do. It didn’t bring more revenue or new customers, but it was the only way my superiors knew - and being guys with big egos, they had to be right. I had no problem working hard. I had a problem with working hard, doing the wrong thing, and not being able to change it. I cared for this place. I wanted it to work, and I knew we were running in the wrong direction. Frustration started creeping up, giving good company to the growing feeling of exhaustion. A toxic combination. My health started deteriorating. Being busy became feeling stressed, stressed in a very negative, all-consuming and infuriating way. And one day, two little words popped up in my mind that I couldn’t chase away anymore: “What for?”
That was my sign that I needed to change something. But my mind had shut down, the images had disappeared. I felt trapped in a big black hole, and I couldn’t “see” a way out. I was terrified.
What I found when I stopped running
So I escaped. I took some time off and jumped on a plane to Bali - a place that has always been dear to my heart. Not for the beaches, not for the fun - but to retreat, to recover and to find myself again.
In a little yoga place, I met people from all walks of life - the successful investment banker from London, who quit his stressful corporate job and decided to travel for several months in search of a more fulfilling life. The businesswoman, who was recovering from her divorce. The lady in her fifties, who saw her children leaving the nest, and was now sitting quietly with the question: what comes next?
All of them had one thing in common - they had outgrown the lives they had lived before, and they had granted themselves the space to think about a different future than what they had anticipated. So I realised, I wasn’t alone in this. Many others felt the same way and faced the same struggles. What had been right for me three years earlier had served its purpose. It was time to leave. Taking some time away from the place that caused my stress gave me the space and perspective I needed to “see” clearly again. It was time for me to leave the corporate world.
I was trained to believe – and everything I have lived has confirmed – that the answers are already inside you. Bali did not give me new answers. It gave me back the silence I needed to hear the ones that were already there.
You are not broken - you have outgrown your previous life
If you feel like your world is falling apart, rest assured that there is nothing wrong with you. Think of a snake shedding its skin. Not because it’s failing to fit in. Because it has outgrown its previous stage.
What feels like a crisis is actually a remembering - a return to being the person you were always meant to be. Your life until now has been preparing you for what is about to come - a new stage that requires exactly your combination of experience, wisdom and hard-won understanding that only a life fully lived can produce.
What causes confusion is that you are not yet seeing the path. It might not just present itself to you - it might require some effort. But it is there. It has always been there.
And if you have been here before – if this is not the first time this feeling has found you, if you have circled this truth for years and somehow always found a reason to keep waiting – then hear this: you already know. You have known for longer than you are ready to admit. The difference this time is that something in you has decided it is no longer willing to wait.
What this means for you
You do not need to have experienced significant turmoil to feel that disconnect. You do not need to quit a job or leave a relationship before you are allowed to think of what comes next. You are allowed to do that right here, right now.
So let me ask you three questions. Not rhetorical ones – real ones worth sitting with:
What if the feeling you have been calling a crisis is actually a signal?
What if the life you are meant to live has been waiting patiently for you to stop running from it?
What if you are not falling apart – but finally, after all this time, falling into place?
You do not need to answer these today. You do not need to answer them to anyone but yourself. But I would invite you to stop calling what is happening to you a crisis. It is too important for that word. Too purposeful. Too alive.
It is a remembering. And it is just beginning.
If this landed for you – if something in these words brought something up – I would love to hear what it was. Just reply to this letter. I read every message.
With love from the Bavarian Alps, Kathrin
