There’s a moment when you realize you don’t recognize yourself anymore.
You look in the mirror and see the same face — but the spark is gone.
The laughter feels forced. The patience is thin. The joy feels like something you vaguely remember from another life.
That’s where I was.
I was overwhelmed 24/7 — stretched so thin between motherhood, work, bills, appointments, and never-ending expectations that I barely had time to breathe. I wasn’t the mom I wanted to be. I was short-tempered, irritable, and constantly on edge.
I could feel it happening — this version of me I didn’t like — but I didn’t know how to stop it.
So, I just kept going. Because that’s what moms do, right? We just keep going.
Until one day, we can’t.
My breaking point didn’t look dramatic from the outside.
There was no big, movie-worthy moment.
It was an ordinary day that became the day everything changed.
A work injury sidelined me — suddenly, the job I had poured myself into was gone. Just like that, I went from “holding it all together” to watching it all fall apart.
That injury didn’t just take away my income; it stripped away my identity.
Who was I if I wasn’t the one carrying it all?
Who was I if I couldn’t work, fix, or provide the way I used to?
And then came the court battles.
The constant fight for child support — not for luxuries, but for the basics my kids deserved. The paperwork, the waiting, the emotional toll of having to prove what should’ve been given freely.
At the same time, life didn’t slow down.
School events, football games, volleyball matches, practices, musicals — the chaos of it all kept spinning.
I was still “mom” through every late-night bake sale, every ride to practice, every meal half-eaten at the counter.
But inside, I was unraveling.
Rock bottom isn’t just about losing something — it’s about losing yourself.
I remember sitting on the edge of my bed one night after everyone was asleep, surrounded by bills and half-folded laundry, and thinking, I can’t live like this anymore.
I didn’t want to wake up angry.
I didn’t want to keep snapping at my kids for being kids.
I didn’t want to live in constant exhaustion and shame.
That night, I realized something important:
I couldn’t go back to who I was — and maybe that was okay.
Because maybe the version of me I was clinging to wasn’t who I was meant to stay.
Starting over wasn’t a choice that came easily.
It came from exhaustion, from surrender.
But when everything fell apart — the job, the income, the image I had of how life “should” look — I found a strange kind of peace.
I found myself sitting at my own riverbend — that quiet curve in life where everything slows down just long enough for you to see clearly again.
I began to rebuild — slowly, gently, imperfectly.
I let go of the pressure to be everything.
I began praying again — not fancy prayers, just honest ones.
I started writing, baking bread, finding comfort in small moments with my kids.
And little by little, I started finding myself again.
It’s not glamorous.
It’s not tidy.
And it definitely doesn’t happen overnight.
Starting over looks like:
- Crying in the car, then wiping your face and walking into a football game with a smile.
- Learning to say no when you used to say yes to everything.
- Letting go of the guilt and learning that peace doesn’t mean everything’s perfect — it means you’re no longer fighting yourself.
- Choosing calm over chaos, one tiny moment at a time.
It’s learning that your worth isn’t tied to what you do, but who you are.
I’m still figuring it out.
Some days I still feel the pull of who I used to be — the hustler, the fixer, the woman who thought rest was weakness.
But now I know:
Rest is holy.
Peace is powerful.
Grace is enough.
Starting over taught me that rock bottom isn’t the end — it’s the bend.
It’s where everything that broke you becomes the soil where your peace begins to grow.
If you’re standing in your own bend right now — overwhelmed, uncertain, maybe even angry — I want you to know this:
You are not failing.
You are rebuilding.
You are allowed to let go of the woman you were to make room for the one you’re becoming.
And that, my friend, is where grace lives.
With hope and warmth,
Sarah
On the Riverbend
“Where faith meets motherhood — and chaos finds grace.”