When Life Knocks the Breath Out of You.

There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. For me, one of those moments was October 31, 2012.

I’ve shared pieces of this before, but it still amazes me how my body remembers what the mind tries to forget… how a season, a smell, or a date on the calendar can wake-up something deep inside your body.

That Halloween, a 100-year storm, known as Hurricane Sandy, hit the East Coast. Hurricane Sandy didn’t just tear through New Jersey — it tore through lives. I was living in Margate, a quiet beach town on the Jersey shore, when the storm hit. My home was severely damaged, water-logged, gutted from the inside out. In the months that followed, I would spend more time living outside my own home — bouncing between rental spaces and borrowed places — than under my own roof. I was literally forced into a nomadic lifestyle with my kids while everything was being repaired.

There was massive destruction, and everyone was overwhelmed. Things didn't move quickly.  Somewhere — in the displacement, the uncertainty, the slow rebuild — I felt another truth surface within me.

It wasn’t just my house that was being stripped down to the frame. I was also being stripped down.

All the things I used to hold onto for safety — control, certainty, familiarity — were suddenly no longer available. And it seemed the more I tried to hold it all together, the more life invited me to let go.

Just four months earlier, I had lost my husband to cancer. Grief had already hollowed out a space inside me I didn’t know how to fill.

Every day felt like I was carrying a life that didn’t fit anymore.

After waiting 7 days until I could return to my home, I remember sitting on what remained of my deck — the boards warped, the lawn littered with debris, and not one ounce of energy left in me, I sat down.

I remember the numbness.

The shock.

The silence after the chaos.

I remember looking up at the sky, and feeling broken. I looked towards the heavens and said, I give up. “I surrender.”

Not because I felt brave, because that wasn't in my thoughts.

Not because I had a plan, because I definitely did not.

Not because I had any idea what would come next.

I said it because I had nothing left in me.

In that moment, my entire life had collapsed into one truth: Control was an illusion. And survival was no longer enough.

For so long, I lived from that place.

Bracing.

Holding.

Managing.

Trying to outrun loss and pain by staying busy, staying strong, staying in motion. Taking care of everyone but me.

What I didn’t know then — what I only understand now — is that the storm was not breaking me. It was breaking me open.

That moment on the deck became the doorway.

The moment I finally surrendered into the unknown…the moment I began a journey back to myself.

I didn’t know the path ahead would lead me to yoga, meditation, sound healing, breathwork, or any of the work I do today.

I didn’t know that healing would become my calling.

I didn’t know I was being transformed.

All I knew was that life had pushed me to my knees, and from that place, I finally whispered the words that changed everything:

“I surrender.”

This is the beginning of my story. And it’s why I believe in transformation so deeply — because I lived it. Because I’ve walked through the wreckage and found my way back to my breath, back to truth, back to myself.

And if you’re in your own storm right now — if life feels heavy, if the ground beneath you feels uncertain — please know this:

Sometimes the breaking is actually the becoming.