I’ve always attached such a negative connotation with the term “falling apart.”

I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel a lot of my life has been focused on trying to keep it all together.

From school to work to social life and relationships, I felt like I was trying to keep up with what a “balanced life” should look like.

And in all honesty, I was initiating a lot of my life from a place of what I thought I should be doing—not necessarily from what felt right, or what I knew to be true.

Life was more geared toward doing, learning, and achieving, and less about presence, allowing what is and experiencing a quality that I so deeply yearned for.

It’s not that it all felt forced or I didn’t enjoy what I was doing, but I got swept away in the hustle and bustle, and was missing that quality I hadn’t fully experienced in my life until this past year.

That quality was ease.

A year ago I experienced an injury that brought much of my life to a halt. Everything I identified with (and some things I didn’t even realize I identified with) fell away rather abruptly.

As challenging, unsettling and downright frightening as that experience was, I’m not only grateful for it now, but the after effects have been radically life changing.

What has transpired in my life since that incident has left me in deep reverence, awe and with a newfound experience of what it means to be at peace.

It was the biggest upheaval and most powerful experience of falling apart. And the main lesson I took from it was that we must die before we die, to really feel alive. 

Although I still stand by this belief, what I’ve learnt throughout this past year, as my life began to reform and take shape, is that the revelation of this experience isn’t just a one-time thing. It needs to occur, in a more subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) way, time and time again.

Prior to this year, when aspects of my life were shifting, changing or falling away, I would reach and try to grab onto something that appeared stable and unchanging. I would try to micromanage the hell out of life and always have a plan (and sometimes 2 or 3).

This year I realized that my micromanaging tendencies stemmed from fear and a lack of faith. And it was taking up space for things to come into fruition in an organic, graceful and easeful way.

Although falling apart is scary at first, when we courageously allow things to come undone, we create space. A space that is just bursting with potential and comprised of infinite possibilities in regard to the way our life may unfold.

When we’re willing to come apart, we gift ourselves the opportunity to pause, breathe, and check-in with what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how it really feels. And not only question what we’re doing with our precious time, but the quality of love and attention in which we are doing it with.

When we’re willing to come undone, it allows us to witness our life from a bird’s eye view in regard to how our thoughts, words and actions are influencing and creating our experience. We can see if we’re living from a place of fear and should be doings, or if we’re fully engaged and living wholeheartedly.

We don’t need to experience an injury, an intense event, or have everything in our life fall away all at once. We just need to realize that in each and every moment we are in a state of choice, and can come undone at our own request.

This falling apart experience isn’t a once in a lifetime event. It can and will happen throughout the many seasons, places and phases of our lives.

Now, each morning when I wake, I say a prayer for whatever needs to fall away in my inner and outer life to sweetly do so. To make space for the experiences, people and places that are in deeper alignment with my soul values and my life path.

I’m no longer nervous for the change, transformation and evolution of this life. I’m excited, curious and moving throughout each day with a deeper connection to the pulsation of ease.

I believe to my core that breakdowns are necessary for breakthroughs, and that there’s potent medicine in our willingness to fall apart.

When we allow ourselves to do so, we get the opportunity to bask in a space of unlimited potential, and then come back together from a place of truth, choice and authenticity.

When we loosen the grip on who we think we are, what life is supposed to look like, and simply get out of our own way through coming undone, our days becomes richer, more soul satisfying and increasingly in tune with the eternal rhythm of this life experience.

When we step out of the goal driven, tunnel vision, micro-managing way of living we make room for what is occurring now, and all that is yet to come. We create a sacred space to live out our biggest and wildest hopes, visions and dreams.

I now feel like I’m constantly in a state of coming undone, of unlearning, a falling apart of sorts. And it doesn’t feel sticky, challenging or accompanied by a negative connotation anymore.

“Unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and embrace you who you are.” ~ Brene Brown

I’m happy to say that I’m falling apart in the most nourishing of ways and I love it. It feels fabulous, it feels spacious and it feels free.

Author: Alexa Torontow

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Used with permission from Karolina Gnat