“Crisis is what happens when the soul can no longer carry the lie.” — Michael Meade
When the Map Stops Working
There’s a moment, if you’re paying attention, when the old ways stop working.
It doesn’t usually arrive with fireworks or fanfare. It arrives in the silence, in the middle of the night, or halfway through your morning routine.
The coffee tastes the same. The inbox is full. And still, something inside you knows. You can’t keep going like this.
This is the descent.
It’s not failure. It’s not burnout. It’s not even a breakdown, though it might look like all of those things.
The descent is what happens when the soul begins to stir beneath the surface of the life you’ve carefully built.
For entrepreneurs in midlife, like me, it can feel like betrayal. You’ve done everything right. You’ve achieved what you were supposed to. You’ve built something admired and respected.
And yet, inside, there’s an ache. A silence. A sense of being unmoored.
The Unraveling Is Sacred
In the world we’ve inherited, falling apart is seen as weakness. We are told to hustle, to pivot, to move faster. But the descent is asking you to slow down. To stop doing. To be still enough to feel what’s breaking open.
This season is marked by grief. Not always the big, obvious kind. Often, it’s a quiet mourning: for the self you once were, for dreams that no longer fit, for the mask you’ve worn for too long.
You might find yourself forgetting who you are. And that’s not a mistake. That forgetting is a kind of clearing. An invitation to listen more deeply.
Because before something new can emerge, the old must be allowed to die.
What If You Didn’t Fix It?
We’re wired to fix things. To find solutions, book a coach, download the next framework.
But what if you didn’t? What if you let yourself sit in the mess?
The descent is not a puzzle to solve. It’s a process to honor. And often, the wisest thing you can do is to stop trying to escape it. Stop distracting yourself from the ache. Let yourself feel the raw, unscripted emotions that come when the identity you’ve clung to begins to dissolve.
This is not easy. It will test you. But it will also begin to soften you. To return you to a kind of sacred humility.
Descent as Fertile Ground
Something is being composted in the descent. Something is being made ready for new life. But you don’t get to know what it is yet.
Your job isn’t to control the outcome. Your job is to stay close to yourself. To breathe. To keep walking, even when the path disappears beneath your feet.
In my own life, it’s been these seasons - these total unravellings - that taught me the most.
When everything fell apart and I had to ask, “Who am I, really, when there’s nothing left to prove?”
A Different Kind of Strength
It takes strength to stay when everything inside you wants to run. It takes courage to admit that the life you built is no longer true. But on the other side of that courage is something more honest. Something more aligned. A kind of leadership that doesn’t come from certainty, but from deep integrity.
If you’re in the descent right now, I want you to know… you’re not alone. This is not the end of your story. It’s the fertile beginning of something truer.
Let it fall apart. That’s how the light gets in.
