When the Ice Started to Melt

For a while now, I’ve felt a quiet ache I couldn’t name.

I wasn’t drinking, but I also wasn’t truly living.

In the 12-step world, they call it a dry drunk, when you’re technically sober, but spiritually restless, disconnected, and misaligned.
And that’s where I found myself.

Nothing catastrophic happened, just a slow drift away from the things that make me feel most alive. I was showing up, working hard, doing all the “right” things, but underneath, I felt off.
Like I’d forgotten how to hear my own truth.

It showed up in little ways: partying a bit, ignoring the bills piling up, saying yes when I meant no, dating men who mirrored my disconnection back to me, getting stuck in the story that life was happening to me.

Then, a few weeks ago, something shifted.

I walked into a yoga studio, guided, I think, by something bigger. After class, someone invited me to a women’s workshop that weekend. I didn’t know what I was saying yes to, but it felt right.

Halfway through the day, they brought out an ice bath.
Now, I cold plunge all the time, it’s not new to me. But this time felt different.

As I stepped in, one of the instructors looked at me and asked softly,
“Did you give natural birth?”

I nodded, a little caught off guard.

She smiled and said,
“You handle hard things so well.”

That’s when it hit me.
Tears started streaming down my face, not from the cold, but from recognition.
Because she was right. I have handled hard things.
But I’d been handling life instead of feeling it.
Holding it all together so tightly that I forgot what it felt like to soften.

And as I sat there, watching the ice melt around me, I could feel something melting inside me too.
The coldness. The walls. The distance I’d built to survive.
All of it softening into something human again.

When I climbed out, I felt lighter.
Not transformed, just more present.

Since then, things have shifted quietly.
I’ve been saying no more often. Listening deeper. Meeting my kids with softness instead of control. And somehow, the whole house feels different, calmer, more alive.

Here’s what I’m learning:
Healing doesn’t always look like transformation.
Sometimes it’s simply remembering how to feel again.
Sometimes it’s saying yes to the thing that scares you, so the ice can finally start to melt.

So this week, maybe ask yourself:
Are the things in your life numbing you… Or nurturing you?

One path makes you disappear.
The other brings you home.

With love,
Karen 🤍