Rebuilding in the In-Between

the quiet, unfinished work of learning safety after survival

Lately I’ve been realizing that I rarely give myself credit for how much rebuilding I’ve actually done in such a short amount of time.

Maybe because survival rarely feels impressive while you’re inside of it.

It just feels exhausting.

I left a thirty-six-year marriage and moved alone to a rural cabin surrounded by trees, deer trails, hummingbirds, and silence loud enough to hear my own thoughts for the first time in decades.

And since then, I have been rebuilding my life in fragments.

Not neatly.
Not linearly.
Not gracefully.

But sincerely.

I maintained my real estate license while questioning whether I even wanted to remain in real estate at all.

I studied intuitive practices, Akashic Records, animal communication, grief work, equine therapy, coaching, astrology, spiritual development, past-life regression, massage, and emotional healing, trying to understand both myself and the invisible currents that shape human lives.

At one point I created an entire business around intuitive coaching and communication because somewhere beneath all the unraveling, I was still trying to believe there was wisdom inside my pain.

Sometimes rebuilding does not look like certainty.
Sometimes it looks like taking one more class while your world quietly burns in the background.

All of this while navigating estrangement from my children.

All of this while grieving a grandchild I may never know.

All of this while standing in the middle of a divorce that now feels suspended in uncertainty after my estranged husband lost the job he held for twenty-five years.

Finances unclear.
Health insurance unclear.
The future unclear.

And still, life keeps asking to be lived.

---

Recently I started working part-time at a small olive oil and balsamic vinegar shop in town.

The job is strangely exhausting and strangely joyful.

My feet ache after seven hours on the concrete floor. I developed plantar fasciitis almost immediately, apparently another glamorous milestone of middle age and reinvention.

And yet…

there is something healing about this tiny shop.

The smell of olive oil and herbs.
The curiosity of customers.
The artistry of flavor pairings.
The rhythm of small-town conversations.

I find myself fascinated by the mystery of olive oil & balsamic vinegar the way some people become fascinated by wine or poetry.

And maybe that makes sense.

Because after years of emotional heaviness, there is something beautiful about discovering that life can still contain subtlety.

Still contain pleasure.

Still contain surprise.

Healing is sometimes nothing more glamorous than discovering you still have the ability to be interested in life.

I grew up in a small town, though my parents never quite seemed to trust it.

They were city people carrying their own fears, and much of my childhood was shaped around avoiding danger, avoiding judgment, avoiding people deemed unsafe.

I always felt slightly outside of things.

Like I was observing belonging instead of fully inhabiting it.

And now here I am again in a small rural town, trying to rebuild a life almost one minute at a time.

---

The deer I once loved so dearly have mostly disappeared now.

Some moved on.
Some were likely killed by hunters.
Some simply stopped returning.

I no longer see sweet Teddy or Nathan or the familiar herd that once felt like daily companions in my healing.

Instead, there is a new group now:
an older doe who appears pregnant,
two younger females,
and two males who wander through quietly as though they have always belonged here.

At first their arrival made me sad.

But lately I’ve been wondering if they are teaching me something.

Maybe life was never meant to remain static.

Maybe love was never measured by permanence.

Maybe beings come into our lives, human and animal alike, carrying exactly what we need for a particular season before moving on again.

Not as punishment.
Not as abandonment.

Just as part of the sacred rotation of living things.

The hummingbirds have returned too.

The squirrels creep closer despite my little terrier’s outrage.

The birds wait for peanuts in the morning as though we have quietly entered into a covenant together.

And in these tiny moments, I catch glimpses of something that almost feels like peace.

---

But underneath it all, there is still an old current running through me.

A feeling of not being enough.

Not productive enough.
Not successful enough.
Not healed enough.
Not certain enough.

It is an exhausting thing to carry.

Especially because I now understand that the feeling did not begin with adulthood.

It began much earlier.

In a home shaped by fear.
By volatility.
By emotional unpredictability.

Children raised inside instability often become adults who struggle to relax even in safety.

The nervous system never fully stops scanning.

Never fully believes rest is deserved.

So even now, sitting in this quiet cabin surrounded by trees and birdsong, part of me still waits for impact.

Still hears echoes of old words.

Still remembers being told I was not productive enough when I was unemployed and emotionally drowning.

Words spoken during one of the hardest seasons of my life.

Words that attached themselves to wounds already decades old.

Trauma has a way of making criticism feel eternal.

And yet…

despite all of this,
despite the grief,
the uncertainty,
the legal limbo,
the aching feet,
the financial fear,
the loneliness,
the rebuilding,

there is also this undeniable truth:

I am still here.

Still learning.
Still working.
Still loving.
Still feeding birds.
Still noticing beauty.
Still trying.

Maybe that counts for more than I have allowed myself to believe.

Maybe rebuilding was never supposed to look polished.

Maybe it was always meant to look like this:

a woman standing in the middle of her unfinished life,
holding grief in one hand and olive oil in the other,
while deer move silently through the trees behind her.