I believe that there’s a moment in every human’s life when something erupts from within. Quietly at first, like a whisper that grows louder until it becomes a howl. For me, that moment came on a weekday, with dirt under my fingernails and a tulip in my hand. But the eruption started long before that.

I grew up thinking life had to be hard. That was the script. That was the expectation.

Coming from an immigrant family that moved from Albania to Greece, I watched my parents and relatives work in grueling jobs, sacrificing joy and softness for survival. Love looked like responsibility. Rest was indulgent. If your spouse watched the kids for a day, you were supposed to compensate. If you were exhausted from your job, you still had to switch instantly into homemaker, mother, partner. The cost of belonging, it seemed, was self-erasure.

And I bought into that story for years. Especially after becoming a mother of two under four, balancing a full-time job.

But something in me started to rebel.

It wasn’t sudden. It came in waves. First through anger, then tears, then the unbearable ache of knowing I couldn’t go on like this. My soul was screaming. And I realized: no amount of self-help tips could substitute for what I was really craving—a return to myself.

I used to wake up at the same time as my kids, immediately swept into the chaos—making breakfast, thinking about laundry before I’d even made my coffee. I'd get to the end of the night and scroll mindlessly just to feel something that resembled space.

But then I made one tiny shift. I started waking up at 4 or 5am. And I made a pact with myself: absolutely no chores before 7am.

Not even one dish. No laundry. No prepping. That was my sacred time.

If the kids were up early or my husband needed something, I had to hold that boundary like my life depended on it. Because honestly—it did.

On days I broke that boundary, the day unraveled. I would feel disoriented, overwhelmed, bitter. But when I kept it? I felt clear. Like I could breathe. Like my soul had room again.

And the more I held that boundary, the more I started making others. If I didn’t want to do an activity, I said so. If a project at work needed a different approach, I offered it. If a hard conversation with my husband had to happen, I found the courage.

I even found myself changing how I started my days—replacing self-doubt with intentional thoughts, telling a positive story to my coworkers instead of absorbing the noise around me. I was remembering who I was before the world told me who to be.

But some days, the old patterns would sneak back in. I’d lose my temper. Miss my alone time. Snap at my family. Let the grief of not having more spaciousness swallow me.

And every time that happened, I felt like my soul was banging on the inside of my ribs.

That’s when I knew this wasn’t just burnout—it was a soul hunger. One that couldn’t be negotiated with. Not anymore.

One afternoon, I saw a tulip in our home that was clearly outgrowing the small vase it was in. The bulb was pushing through the dirt like it needed out. Like it needed earth. Like it needed space.

That tulip was me.

So I took it with me to the park. After work. Just me and the flower and the dirt.

I didn’t rush. I didn’t perform. I didn’t try to make it “look spiritual.” I just sat with my hands in the soil and planted the tulip like it was a declaration. A ritual. A promise to the part of me that had been crying out for years:

“I will not abandon you again.”

That tulip was my line in the sand. My threshold moment. It symbolized everything I was letting go of—over-functioning, guilt, silence—and everything I was stepping into: rootedness, clarity, softness, strength.

It was my act of reclaiming.

Because here’s the truth: what I was experiencing wasn’t just stress. It was a depth psychological rupture. An inner awakening that Carl Jung, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and Marion Woodman wrote about for years.

It was the collapse of the false self. The mask. The persona.

I had been functioning as the "good girl," the "strong woman," the "holding-it-together mom" for so long that I didn’t even know I was suffocating.

But when I started soulwork—reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, taking silent walks in nature, daring to want more—I touched something wild and ancient in me.

And once that part woke up, it refused to go back to sleep.

The more I tried to ignore it, the louder it got. I became emotionally volatile when I didn’t get my sacred alone time. I’d cry hard. Scream. Feel like I couldn’t be around my family at all unless I’d walked in the woods alone first. It scared me sometimes. But now I see it clearly:

It wasn’t irrational. It was wisdom.

It was my nervous system finally breaking down after years of overfunctioning. It was my soul howling for space. It was my shadow surfacing. My truth. My essence. All of it demanding to be seen.

So if you’re in this place right now, let me say this:

You’re not wrong for needing solitude. You’re not broken for craving peace. You’re not selfish for drawing a line in the sand and saying: This time, I come first.

You’re being initiated.

This is your threshold.

And it deserves a ritual.

If you’ve read this far, and your chest aches because you recognize yourself in these words, then this story is for you. You are not alone. You are not lost. You are not dramatic.

You’re awakening.

So plant your tulip. Take your walk. Draw your boundary. Rage if you need to. Cry as long as you must.

But don’t forget—your soul is not negotiable.

A Ritual of Rebirth for the Soul Who Can’t Go Back to Sleep