I Used to Think Burning Down Was Failure

This weekend we took the side-by-side through last year's burn area. They're clearing the deadfall right now and replanting, and it's genuinely beautiful. Not in spite of the fire. Because of it. There's this bright, electric green pushing up through ground that was black twelve months ago.

I stood there thinking about my own fire. The one I used to be ashamed of.

What I used to believe

For years, I believed burning down meant I was weak. That's not an exaggeration for effect, that's actually what I believed. I sold two businesses because I thought my best days were behind me. I thought that meant I'd failed. Not "hit a rough patch," not "going through something hard." Failed. Weak. Broken in a way that meant I didn't have what it took anymore.

I didn't tell people the real reason for a long time. It's a lot easier to say "new chapter" or "pursuing other opportunities" than it is to say "my brain stopped working and I couldn't keep pretending I was fine."

That belief, that the fire meant I was broken, cost me more than the fire itself did. It kept me quiet when I needed to be loud. It kept me apologizing for something that wasn't a character flaw, it was biology nobody had prepared me for.

What I believe now

Here's what changed. I stopped seeing the burn as the end of the story and started paying attention to what happens after, if you actually tend to it.

A forest that burns and gets walked away from stays a wasteland. Deadfall piles up. Nothing new gets room to grow because the wreckage is still sitting on top of everything. But a forest that gets managed after the fire, cleared, replanted, given what it needs, comes back greener and stronger than it was before the fire ever touched it.

The fire isn't optional. Perimenopause and menopause are going to rip through whether you're ready or not. But what grows back after is not automatic. That part is a choice, and it's work.

I can see the beauty behind the hard now. Not because the hard stopped being hard. It didn't. I've still got a migraine that's lasted ten months and gut issues that never fully resolved. The beauty isn't in some fairy tale ending where everything gets fixed. It's in what the hard made possible when I stopped treating it like a life sentence and started treating it like a burn site that needed a plan.

Getting out of victim mode

This is the part I actually want to talk about, because it's the part nobody wants to hear.

Instagram will show you the after. The glow-up. The "I found myself" caption over a photo where the lighting is perfect and the smile is easy. What it won't show you is the part where you're standing in the ash figuring out what to clear first, doing the unglamorous, boring, repetitive work of actually rebuilding.

Victim mode feels justified. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. When your body turns on you, when doctors dismiss you, when you're forgetting things you used to know cold and crying in your car before meetings so nobody sees, you have every right to be angry about it. Feel that. Don't skip it.

But at some point, and only you know when that point is for you, staying in it stops being about processing what happened and starts being about avoiding what needs to happen next. Victim mode says "this was done to me." Getting out of victim mode says "this happened, and now what am I going to do about it."

For me, "now what" looked like going back to research mode obsessively until I understood what was actually going on in my body. It looked like testing things on myself before I ever considered sharing them with anyone else. It looked like finding a lab that could make HeadStrong for $60 a month instead of the $500 it was costing me at home, because I refused to build something I couldn't in good conscience ask a friend to afford. None of that was pretty. None of it would've made a good Instagram post. It was just the work.

What I'd tell you

If you're in your burn right now, you don't need me to tell you it's hard. You already know that better than anyone.

What I want you to hear is that the fire doesn't get to decide what you are. It gets to happen to you, that part's out of your hands, but what comes after is still yours to build. That's the whole difference between a forest that stays a wasteland and one that comes back greener than it started.

Clear your deadfall. Ask for help doing it if you need to, I did. Stop waiting to feel like the after-photo before you're allowed to start doing the work. The work is what gets you there, not the other way around.

If part of what's making the work feel impossible is the fog and the exhaustion that won't let you think straight long enough to make a plan, that's exactly the gap HeadStrong was built to close. It won't do the work for you. Nothing will. But it might give you enough back to be able to do it yourself.

You get to decide what grows back. Just make sure you're actually planting something.

With gratitude, Sue