Breaking Open: The Sacred Art of Falling Apart

Have you ever felt your life crumbling around you? Those moments when everything seems to fall apart simultaneously can be terrifying—but what if they're actually sacred beginnings?

In this deeply personal episode, Lizzy shares her recent experience of completely upending her life. From selling her family home of ten years to embrace a nomadic camper lifestyle with her husband and young children, to the emotional breaking point when their storage unit was broken into and the police never showed up after hours of waiting. That night, after months of holding everything together, she finally allowed herself to fall apart completely; crying for four straight hours in what became not just a breakdown, but a powerful breakthrough.

Through her raw, vulnerable storytelling, Lizzy reveals how these moments of coming undone can teach us our greatest lessons about strength, compassion, and authentic connection. She explores how vulnerability becomes power when we allow others to witness our true selves and hold us when we can't stand alone. Most importantly, she reminds us that emotions only live for 90 seconds in our bodies—unless we trap them inside by refusing to feel them.

Whether you're currently experiencing your own season of unraveling or sensing the pressure building beneath the surface, this episode offers gentle permission to break open and release what no longer serves you. Join us as we explore the transformative question: "If everything fell away, would I still be okay?" Your journey through difficult transitions becomes sacred when you trust that even in falling apart, you remain whole, safe, and held exactly where you need to be.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Modern Zen Collective
• 1:06 Lessons From Falling Apart
• 2:10 My Life Upended: The Camper Decision
• 4:14 The Breaking Point: Storage Unit Tears
• 7:28 The Beauty in Breaking Open
• 10:35 Allow Yourself to Feel and Release
• 13:50 Final Thoughts and Connection Invitation
• 15:48 Modern Zen Collective App Information

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:13

Hi, I'm Lizzie and I'm Nikki. Have you ever felt that your life was missing purpose, joy or deep connection? Welcome to the Modern Zen Collective podcast, where we embrace holistic living for a joyful, purpose-driven life.

Speaker 1: 0:29

In this podcast, we'll explore holistic practices, consciousness expansion and spiritual alignment. We will dive into personal development practices that connect mind, body, spirit and share secrets that ancient cultures have known for centuries. Together, we aim to guide, educate and connect individuals eager to transform their lives.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Join us weekly on the Modern Zen Collective podcast and elevate your mind, body and spirit. And now on to today's episode.

Speaker 3: 1:06

Hello friends, welcome back to the Modern Zen Collective Podcast. It's just me with you today, lizzie here, and I want to talk about something real, something raw the lessons that I've learned from falling apart. We all go through those seasons when it feels like the pieces of our lives, our identity or even just our energy won't hold together anymore, and while it can feel messy, scary and even shameful at times, I've come to see falling apart not as the end, but as the sacred beginning of something new. So in this episode, I'm going to share a bit of my own story what crumbling has taught me about strength, compassion and rebuilding, and I'll offer some takeaways for you. So, if you're in your own season of unraveling, my hope is that you'll leave this conversation feeling a little less alone, maybe even a little more graceful with yourself if you're walking through one of those breaking points right now. So I'm not sure how much of you follow me on Instagram, but my life has been changing a lot lately and my husband and I have recently decided to sell our house of 10 years that we've lived in in Fort Worth, texas, and embark out on the road on the camper life. We've never owned a camper before, so we're going zero to a hundred here, but my husband's business that he owns with his partner is out on the road, and so we have spent a lot of time apart over the past two years that he's been in this fiber optic business, and we're just over it. We want to raise our kids together as a unit. My son Jackson is going to be three in November and my daughter Blake is going to be one in November, and so he really needs his dad right now, and so we have decided to completely upend our life, flip it upside down on its head, do something a little bit crazy sell our house, put all of our stuff into storage, buy a camper an expensive big fifth-wheel camper, of course and hit the road, and there was about a week of just a complete emotional roller coaster. I've never experienced something like this before. Normally, when I'm in a low, I'm just in a low, but this was just a week of high highs and low lows, and it just felt like I didn't know what to do. Everything was just falling apart.

Speaker 3: 3:38

We get back in town from being out of town up in Minnesota, busy my family, we come back into town to do everything, to buy the camper, to put everything in it, to move everything from our storage unit into the camper slash, fill it all up, all the things, over the course of like four days so we could get all of our stuff and out to Tennessee, alabama area. While we get back, I'm spending my first little bit of time away from the family in over a month with my friend for a two-hour session of sauna and infrared light and cold plunging and just girl talk. And I get a text in the middle of it saying that our storage unit had been broken into and I just started crying immediately. I was like why is it everything all at once? I just started crying immediately. I was like why is it everything all at once? And I'd had a hard few days before that packing everything up myself up in Minnesota, driving my two kids and four dogs from the cabin in Minnesota all the way down to Texas, not having anywhere to stay. So having to stay in Oklahoma for a week and then moving to Texas, and so I'd already been on an emotional roller coaster.

Speaker 3: 4:46

Then we find out our storage unit that we worked so hard to organize and go through all the things to just keep. Things we wanted have been broken into, boxes been torn apart X, y and Z. I go to the storage unit. We call the cops. I literally wait on the cops from 4 pm until 9.20 pm at night, five and a half hours All the while. They tell me they can't tell me when someone's going to be there. Nobody ever showed up. The sergeant never called me, nobody ever did anything. I was just distraught. I had never called the police before for help and then realizing that they aren't going to come just really kind of burst my naive little bubble about that, which was also very hard. And then we were putting down our dog Moose of 12 years. On Friday I also had podcast recording interviews and a moderator, a panel that I moderated for junior league that week. That went so well, and so it was just so many highs and so many lows.

Speaker 3: 5:51

And that Monday night, even before getting to putting my dog down and all the other things that Monday, when I was waiting for the cops and feeling so helpless and like I couldn't do anything and no one would help me and just not understanding why someone would break into our stuff, all these different things I cried and I cried and I cried. I literally cried for like four hours, even when I got home that night, I cried myself to sleep. It was just so. I was so overwhelmed, I was so tired, I was so sad and upset that nobody would help me. I was so sad and upset that nobody would help me.

Speaker 3: 6:29

I was also stressed out, so stressed out with everything that had been going on, and I just finally let it all go. There had been all these things over the course of the summer that had upset me that I just brushed under the rug or was like I don't need to deal with it, it's fine, we're moving soon, it's fine, it's fine, I don't need to talk about it. And it finally just all hit a wall and I just cried and I just cried and I just cried and it was such a release. It was such a release I mean, it was an ugly cry. It was one of those full body, full body, sobbing cries that you just can't stop and, honestly, I A lot of good came from it.

Speaker 3: 7:13

A lot of good came from it when I fell apart and broke down and was vulnerable with my husband and my friends. I allowed them to hold me up. I allowed them to be my strength. I allowed myself to let go of control. I allowed myself to be vulnerable and to show that side of myself to other people that, broken down, don't have it all together, don't know what to do, helpless side. And I allowed other people to see me as my whole, authentic self, not just the vision that we put out there, the vision that everybody thinks we are on social media or in our lives just when we leave the house even. And I truly allowed my partner, my husband, to be there for me. It was a pretty big thing, if you think about it people to witness that and to hold you. It can be a very scary thing, but it can be a very amazing thing to witness who's there for you.

Speaker 3: 8:48

And we can't just see this as falling apart, but it's more breaking open. It's allowing ourselves to show who we are, to allow the inside out, to allow the hurt out, to allow everything that we know longer serves us to go. It's choosing grace over judgment, allowing us to have grace for ourselves, allowing other people to have grace for us, allowing us to have grace instead of judging people, judging ourselves. Seeing vulnerability as strength, as a power, not control as strength, but vulnerability, true vulnerability as a strength, letting go of who you think you should ought to be all the time in order for everyone else to be good, in order for people to like you and just being who you truly are in that moment, trusting that falling apart is sacred, it's necessary, it's part of the process. We need to fall apart, we need to let go, we need to crack open in order to move on to things that are better, to things that serve us to our highest timeline.

Speaker 3: 10:25

Where are you holding things together? That is really difficult right now. Do you feel yourself? Catching yourself before you start crying because it's not a good time, it's not a good place? You don't feel like it in that moment. Have you had those recently? It's time for you to let it all go. It's time for you to break down, break open. It's time for you to break down, break open. It's time for you to let it all release. Choose who you do it with, choose a safe space, choose a safe person, but allow yourself time to fall apart, to let go. And I want you to ask yourself if everything fell away, would I still be okay? If everything fell away, am I still held? Am I still taken care of? Am I still safe? Because you are God, creator, source, the universe, only wants what's best for you. They only want your highest timeline.

Speaker 3: 11:53

The trials, the tests, these hard times they come because they're here to see if we mean what we say and if we're still going to walk the path that we said we wanted, the path that we chose, the path that we decided we wanted to be on. So these tests come, these trials come, these things that are hard, that knock us down, that knock us back. They're there to see if we still remain strong and true to what we say we want. Because, at the end of the day, it's our choice. We're presented with opportunities. We're presented with Path A, path B, path C, path D, all these different ways that we could go, constant decisions on how we want to respond to the things that are being presented to us throughout our life. It's our decision what we do, it's our decision how we move forward.

Speaker 3: 12:42

But it can be very hard to move forward if we're constantly dragging things behind us that are no longer serving us, that are no longer ours, that are just weighing on us because we haven't allowed ourselves to truly feel them, to truly let them pass through our bodies, to truly release them, because emotions only live for 90 seconds. So let's just allow ourselves to be with it for 90 seconds, or else you end up crying, like I did for four hours, because you haven't allowed yourself to cry when you wanted to cry, you haven't allowed yourself to feel when you needed to feel, and so it compounds and then it all rushes out like a wave, and that's what happened to me, and so I'm here today to remind you that it is okay. If you're at that point, like I was, if you're exhausted, if you're stressed out, if this last thing the straw broke, the camel's back, that's fine. Let it all go Cry, cry, cry, cry. Put on sad songs to make you cry more. Let it all go. Allow someone else to be your safe space, to be your strength when you don't have it. And if you're not there yet, catch yourself before you get there. Allow yourself to cry when you need to. Allow yourself to take that moment to feel all those emotions that come up that aren't the best that we want to feel. Allow yourself to just feel them in the moment, because if you let that pass through your body in 90 seconds, it'll be gone and you won't have held it in any sort of way. So thank you for spending time with me today.

Speaker 3: 14:26

If you're in a season of falling apart, remember you're not failing, you're unfolding, and sometimes it's in that breaking, in that breaking point, that we discover the truest parts of ourselves and those around us. So if something in this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend who might need to hear it, who might need this reminded, someone that just popped into your head. Or come and connect with me or Nikki. We're on Instagram. You can find our handles in the bottom in the podcast episode notes. Or connect with us on the website modernzencocom. We're really passionate about building this community around holistic practices, spiritual growth and soul-aligned living. So join us and until next time, be gentle with yourself, honor your seasons, honor your emotions and trust that, even in unraveling, you are whole, you are safe, you are held, you are seen, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Thank you so much for joining us today on the Modern Zen Collective podcast. If this episode resonated with you, we'd love for you to share it with a friend and leave a review. It helps more conscious women like you find our community, and if you're craving a deeper connection to your practice, we've created something just for you the Modern Zen Collective app a sanctuary in your pocket. Inside, you'll find guided meditations, soulful workshops, energy updates and intuitive channeling, all curated to support your spiritual and holistic wellness. Plus, for just $3.99 a month, you'll receive timely push notifications with astrological insights and gentle reminders to realign with your highest self. It's rooted in ritual, made for modern life and always within reach. Just head to the App Store or Google Play and search Modern Zen Collective to download the app and begin your journey with us today. And, as always, any links or resources we mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes. Until next time, keep trusting your path and honoring your unfolding.