When Life Stops Making Sense: The Sacred Path of Rupture and Renewal

When Life Stops Making Sense: The Sacred Path of Rupture and Renewal

Have you ever looked around at your life and wondered, What is happening? The career that once fit no longer feels right. Relationships shift. Family dynamics change. Old beliefs crack. The structures that once felt solid suddenly feel unstable.

In this deeply personal episode of Star Women Rising, Melinda explores the spiritual cycle of rupture, collapse, and emergence—the process that often begins when our old identity can no longer support who we are becoming. Drawing from her own experiences with health challenges, major life transitions, family changes, and profound personal transformation, she shares how what feels like falling apart may actually be the beginning of something far more meaningful. 

In this episode, you'll discover:

✨ What a "rupture" really is and how to recognize the first cracks in your old story
 ✨ Why collapse isn't failure—it may be an invitation to transformation
 ✨ How to navigate uncertainty when your old coping mechanisms stop working
 ✨ The difference between rescuing others and holding space for their growth
 ✨ Why emergence often begins before we even realize it's happening
 ✨ How to stay grounded when life feels chaotic and uncertain

If you've been questioning your path, grieving an old version of yourself, or feeling like everything around you is changing, this conversation is a reminder that you are not alone. Sometimes the most beautiful chapters begin when the old story can no longer contain who you're meant to become. 

🌙 This episode is for anyone standing in the space between who they were and who they are becoming.

🌸 About Chickology™
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Star Women Rising, where cosmic roots meet earthly power. I'm Melinda, and together we'll awaken the fire within and above, exploring intuition, soul wisdom, and the ancient truths written in the stars. This isn't about escaping the world. It's about remembering who you are and rising stronger in it. Star Women Rising is part of the Chicology Podcast Collective: Real Women, Real Stories, Rising Together. Let's jump right in. Again, I'd like to invite you to check out some of the other podcasts under Chicology. You will not regret it. Somewhere in there, you will resonate, find people who are experiencing similar journeys. Amazing women, amazing stories. So today, today, today, today, just like every other day, there's just so much going on. So much going on. It's just it's shocking. So I I want to talk about rupture, collapse, and emergence. And I've experienced this in my own life, you know, this uh this rupture, this there's there's like this craziness, this weird, this weird experience personally of things just not being the way they used to be, or or it I can't even describe it. I know I'm not the only one experiencing this. Whether it's personal, whether it's within your family or people around you, you see it on the news, but it's really like when the when life stops making sense, right? It's something, something's going on. That's it's like an unraveling of sorts. I can't, I can't even begin to tell you how prominent this has become in my own world, my own life. My personal observations, you know, I I talked about how I went through this this health crisis. I say crisis, it probably I'm probably exaggerating, maybe I'm being a drama queen, but it really did feel like a crisis for me. And then this, you know, this period of of no movement and feeling really stagnant and my my world was just coming apart. It was it was unraveling. The my life as I've known it has become something completely different. And it's not, it's not like really the obvious stuff, right? Yeah, I moved, you know, I relocated. That's that's obvious. That was a big shift, a big change. But it's it's deeper than that. And I think it's even on some levels it's subtle, but on some levels it's blaring. And if you look around, you might be watching family members go through similar similar things. You're kind of watching their world seemingly crumble, fall apart. You know, for me, I had a lot of I had I came from a really large, extended family that we were very close. And then I went all of a sudden, there's just no contact. Like no contact at all. And then sort of watching the things that they're going through. And it and when your life, the things that felt stable before no longer feel stable. Could be your job, your friendships, your family, um, your identity. Like there's no stability in it anymore. And you're looking around and you're going, what the hell is going on here? What's happening? What am I experiencing? You start maybe questioning your career, your relationships, your beliefs, your belief systems, politics. Man, that's a big one, right? We went from a world where you didn't really talk about politics and it didn't matter which side of the same coin you were on. Your friends were your friends and your family was your family. And now enter this new day of politics where if you're if you're on the left or you're on the right, we're wanting to beat the hell out of each other. And and and what's really funny is underneath, I think everybody really wants a lot of the same things. I think, you know, you get some craziness on, you know, either end of it, but the reality is people want want the same things. But you you look at this structure, this political structure that just seems to be imploding. It's falling in on itself. You got wars breaking out, there's just just craziness. Your own life, you may be experiencing it, friends, friends either ghosting you or completely exploding and walking away, or family members, your your marriage, your relationship, your children. It's happening on every single level. And it's notable. It's notable for me because I pay attention to everything. And and now I'm I'm really equating it, what I'm seeing on a on a larger scale, on a macro scale. I'm kind of equating it to what I've just been through. And now I'm I'm seeing it everywhere else. So, you know, what if what feels like falling apart isn't failure? You know, what if it doesn't mean you're failing? What if what if it's what if it's a grand design? What if there's there's something so much bigger at play here on every level? You know, the macro, the micro. What if there's just something so much bigger that's happening and it's it's not failure? It may be something beautiful getting ready to emerge. Now, I keep saying I am a work in progress. I'm not quite sure I have reached the emergence aspect. I don't think I've completely emerged because I'm still looking around, going, what the hell is happening? And where is this taking me? And why has it been so difficult? Why has it been so painful? Why has it involved being stripped of pretty much everything that I thought I knew? Family, friends, identity, all of it. Like, you know, I can run down the list of the things for me that have just been shattered. So let's let's define rupture because there's this progression. There's this progression that I'm learning that happens w when this occurs. And the the first aspect to look for is the rupture. And the rupture is a crack in the old story. Your your identity, your marriage, you know, how you live your daily life. Like I get up, I eat breakfast, I go to work, I sit at my desk, I, you know, whatever, whatever your routine is, you come home, you take your kids to their games and come home, get baths, showers, go to bed, wake up, do it all over again. And you're happy in your career and you're happy in your family. And then all of a sudden, you notice there's there's a crack in that story. This job, this job isn't quite what I thought it was. I'm really not enjoying what I'm doing. I'm really not digging the people so much that I'm working with. I'm starting to notice this, there's this kind of meanness, nastiness. And I'm if this is me talking because this was my experience, this career that I thought was great and I loved it, and it it was everything I wanted. And then it started to develop these cracks, and I was noticing more and more that it was not a fit. And at first I was pissed off at the organization, you know, like you got, you know, you guys suck. You aren't a good organization. And they weren't, don't get me wrong. But, you know, I was really making it their responsibility, but it really wasn't. There was a crack, and the crack was me. It just started to not resonate with me anymore. It started to not fit. And from there, it just sort of snowballed. You know, I got to the point where I was just starting to check out. I was like retired on duty, had my laptop watching my Netflix with my door closed and the do not disturb sign. And everybody's got that person in their office, and I remember having them early on in my career, and you're like, yeah, that that person's checked out. They're retired on duty, and you kind of made fun of them and you knew they weren't gonna do much, you know, they just weren't feeling it. And everybody judged them. And then I became that person. I was like checked out. Nope, you're not gonna get much out of me. I'm just gonna do what I need to do to get by, you know, just to not get written up or and even that to the point, write me up. I don't care. So it was a crap. And what was happening, you I was shifting, I was changing. But it initially I I thought it was just, you know, the the place itself. And it was changing too, but it and maybe both of us were, and there was a divergence, right? We were just going different directions. So rupture occurs when your reality no longer matches the framework you've been using to understand yourself or your life, right? I was using my work, it was my framework. It's it's I I identified with my job, what I did. I am this officer, I these are my tasks. I'm here to protect the public. Um and it just it just wasn't wasn't jiving for me anymore. And it could be anything. It marriage changes, and I think those happen far more often and not, you know, you marry somebody, and and if you're like me, I was 19 when I got married. Well, I'm a completely different person than I was at 19. Hell, I'm a completely different person than I was a week ago. Like I am, I am a work in progress. And you just kind of hope that this person you're with is along for the ride with you, that they are able to adjust to these shifts, these changes, but these these cracks happen. It could be whatever, you know, it's not, it could be any little thing that, but you notice it and it changes the relationship and things start to be a little different, and there's a little tension, and these are ruptures. Your career no longer fits. I'm this officer of the law, and uh, this is my job. I don't go on, am I really doing anybody any good here? Am I really making a difference? Keep seeing the same people over and over and over again, and I keep taking them to jail, and they keep telling the same old sad story, and I they keep going to prison, and then their kids come along, and you're oh, you're you're so-and-so's kid. Ah, it's your dad on my caseload, or your mom, you know, just like what am I doing? What the hell am I doing here? I mean, I was getting paid. I I I was I was collecting a check, but something inside me was dying. I'm being dramatic, but it it really felt like I'm dying here. This, I'm not my creativity is gone. I you can't question anybody. You question somebody, you become the troublemaker. Don't question anything, just do what you're told. And in that, you lose a piece of yourself. Could be your belief system. You know, I on this journey, there's probably a million people like me who have come across so many different gurus in the spiritual world. And I I don't necessarily want to say gurus, but you know, along those lines, different people with with different pieces of a puzzle, and you kind of follow that, you go down that line for a while, and you're like, yes, I must meditate for 20 minutes every day. Well, who if you're like me, like who the hell has time to meditate for 20 minutes every day? Well, I guess I'm not going to ascend, right? I'm not gonna ascend because I can't, I can't commit 20 minutes every day to meditation. And not only that, my mind won't even let me sit for that long. Is something wrong with me? Am I broken? It's a crack, it's a crack for me. It was a crack. Like I I just can't, I cannot do these things that these people that are in the know are telling me to do. Something must be wrong. Something must be happening here. Health challenges, you're clipping along and you're pretty healthy and you're feeling really good. And next thing you know, you go to the doctor and you've got this really terrible diagnosis. It's a it's a crack, it's a rupture. Your identity no longer feels authentic like me. I'm an officer of the law and I'm walking around with my vest and my badge and my gun, and I'm arresting people and keeping everybody safe. And I'm going, What? I'm not doing shit. I am not doing a damn thing. I'm collecting a check and I'm taking people to jail and I'm you know recommending they go away to prison as long as possible so nobody has to deal with them. But that that no longer felt authentic because actually, deep down inside, I'm really a caring person. Like I really care about people and I really want people to do well. And I always felt like if one of us isn't doing well, then we're all not really doing well. We don't live on an island. We are not solo in this journey. So it just, you know, my my authenticity ruptured and I had to look at, I had to look at all these things. But the rupture doesn't destroy the structure, right? At the rupture, you're not at destruction. You're just at, you're just at there's a crack. The dam has a crack in it, right? You're gonna go stick your finger in the crack to try to keep the dam from from crumbling. It just, you know, it's it's just that that something that comes through that tells you, mm, this doesn't fit anymore. There's something something's happening here. Something's not right. And it's a little creepy, it's a little freaky. Like your whole world is based on, you know, on these structures that we've created around ourselves. It's like you base your whole world on it. You're, you know, you lose your job and you find out real quick, like when you're scrambling trying to figure out how you're gonna pay your your bills. So our, you know, our worlds are built on these structures religious, political, educational, all these different structures, gatekeepers. They're also gatekeepers that we we live within, these confines that we live within. And for me, like I said, there there was this slow progression, slow progression of all of these cracks appearing. Remember, I said I looked in the mirror and I saw a dead person. You want to talk about a crack? You know, my face was cracking, like, what's happening? What's happening to me? It's scary. It's scary. Am I gonna die? Am I gonna lose everything? Is my world is being turned on its side, and I don't know what to do. And not only do I not know what to do, there's nothing I can do. I mentioned I sat, I you know, get up in the morning and go sit in the chair, and I'd sit there all day just drooling on myself because I just there was nothing. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I could barely function. I was barely functioning. I was I was coming to this collapse in this inability to move, inability to think, inability to really process what was happening to me. I was approaching collapse. Now my collapse, you know, I am a bit of a drama queen, but my collapse is probably nowhere near what other people are experiencing or what we're seeing on the news. And you're looking at people and going, what the hell is what the hell is wrong? What are these people thinking? What is what people are losing their minds. My experience wasn't quite that dramatic, maybe on the scale of things, but in my own world, it was incredibly dramatic. I I've I lost everything that I thought was really important. You know, I was, you know, I'm a family. Family was everything to me. I was always family, you know, family, this this bond. And even that, that was not there anymore. Not the way I thought it should be. So everything around me was, you know, cracking. And my, you know, for me, the the collapse wasn't really catastrophic. Now, I I think there are catastrophic collapses, but I are they really catastrophic? I've and I think that really depends on how you how you manage this this rupture, right? If if things are rupturing and you keep trying to push through like shit ain't really happening, like, nope, that's not, that's not what I'm seeing, that's not what I'm experiencing. I'm just gonna ignore that, then I think you you might experience a more catastrophic feeling collapse. I think for me, because I'm I am a hyper-vigilant person and I'm look, I'm always reading signs and I'm paying attention. I'm going, no, something's something's talking to me. Something is telling me that my world is really about to change. And I I just need to figure out a way to embrace it and to work through it instead of scratching and clawing and trying to, you know, put my finger in the dam or or you know, stitch up all these these cracks with some, you know, dental floss. Like I just, I just had to sit and let it go. And that that doesn't mean it was easy. I mean, it's certainly concerning, it's certainly confusing, but I think for me, it's been less catastrophic because I was paying attention and saying, yeah, there there's definitely something going on. And I need to, I need to just sit and stop and reevaluate who I am, where I am, what I'm doing here, how I'm interacting with people, how I'm giving so much of myself that it's sucking the life force energy out of me. Like I really was starting to pay attention to to how I was functioning and how it was leading to my demise. You know, these structures are changing, they're collapsing. So the collapse happens when an old structure can no longer support who you are becoming. And when you look at it that way, I think it's far less catastrophic. I mean, you can certainly, you can certainly mess yourself up trying to fight it because it's coming down. It's coming down, baby. You look around, look all around you. It's coming down. But like I said, I can I can look back 10 years ago and I am not the same person. That that structure of Melinda 10 years ago doesn't even exist anymore. It can it came to a complete collapse. It's gone. I do not do business the way I used to do business at all anymore. I don't deal with people the same way. In fact, a lot of times I just don't deal with people. Like if you want to be funky and weird, I'm not gonna argue with you. Ten years ago, I'd have cussed you out, I'd have fought you, I'd have, I'd have made you see things my way. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that anymore. You want to throw shade at me? Go on, throw shade. You wanna, you know, put your weird comments or or whatever you have to say about me. You want to put that up, go ahead. You're not you're not gonna get anything from me. There's it's just it's not where I'm at anymore. Collapse is not necessarily losing everything. I mean, I haven't I haven't really lost everything. I in fact, I've really lost nothing. I've lost some relationships that probably didn't belong, so it's not really a loss. So, you know, some friendships, mostly relationships. That was probably an area where I really needed to do the most work. I lost some family members, but they, you know, in the reality was is they weren't very kind to me. So they've they've kicked rocks, they've moved along. I haven't lost anything. I still have my home. It's a mess. I look around it and I keep thinking, oh, how where am I gonna begin with this? Because in my in my collapse, I haven't really been able to function like I used to. I don't function like I used to. It's it's not losing everything, it's not destruction, it's not disaster. Now I know you can look at the news and you can you can see different, you know, a collective collapse. It's not it's not really necessarily pretty either, but I think it's more often confusion, maybe some disorientation, some grieving, grieving your old identities, your old friendships, maybe your old job title. And there's a lot of uncertainty. You know, where where am I going? Where's this taking me? Because I don't know. I have no idea where I'm heading. Each day I ask because I'm like, man, I'm tired, just freaking tired of you know constantly adjusting and and trying to to become. So it's definitely confusing and uncertain. And the collapse is it's it's not me, right? It's it's not me. I am not collapsing. The framework around me is collapsing. It's it's collapsing. Something else is emerging. I'm not who I thought I was. What worked before isn't working now. Man, I used to have a bag of tricks. I could pull out my bag of tricks. It worked. This works every time. You know, now they're duds, right? I'm throwing duds out, nothing's working. This is this is a highly confusing state of being when when your bag of tricks is now a dud. I had to toss it. Well, shit, it doesn't work anymore. What worked then does not work now. And that is that is a very real experience that I was having. And that you want to talk about confusing. Man, that is a confusing place to be. And I don't, like I said, I don't, I don't know what comes next other than emergence, but I'm going to emerge out of this. And I think I'm already emerging out of this a very different person. So the emergence has already started happening. It's just incomplete right now. It it hasn't, it hasn't completed. And I don't know that it ever does. You know, I'll probably go to my grave still emerging. But I can tell you what is emerging, what I am aware of now that's actually coming from all this is far better. It's a far better version of me. I mean, things that used to cause me to spin up and fall out and, you know, go into anxiety and panic and get my feelings hurt or whatever. Whatever. That doesn't, that doesn't happen anymore. I've I've mentioned before, you know, I went with my dad for a procedure and I usually would have been a hot mess. It's not happening. I just got some really very difficult news. It's difficult for the the person who got the news. And my response was so far different from what it would have ever been years ago. I held my center. Like, I'm not gonna do anybody any good if I'm just a hot drooling blubbering mess. I cannot, I cannot do anything from that space. Can't even help myself. So I'm a very different person emerging from this rupture and collapse that I've experienced. Very different person. Still a work in progress. It's not easy, takes a lot of work, takes a lot of consciousness. You have to be really conscious of what's going on in your head, what's going on inside your body. I I really literally have to pay attention to me all day, every day. Is my stomach tightening? If somebody comes near me that I really am not feeling, does my does my stomach tighten? Does engaging with somebody make me kind of pull in and feel small? These are all signs that I pay attention to now. Every day. And I just want to point this out because when you're in collapse, I mean most people don't recognize it when they're in it. I s I certainly didn't. I didn't know what was happening. I thought, I thought I was being punished. I thought the universe hated my guts, you know, from all the things I'd learned before. The universe must really hate me. But why? Because I worked so hard. Is it because I didn't meditate for 20 minutes every day? Is this is this what this is? I'll make it up. I'll make it up. I'll stay after and do extra. Okay. Just just give me my world back. I'll, you know, I'll do better. Make my bag of tricks good again. Because it was so good. Now. No idea. No idea what was going on. So I wanted, you know, I wanted to bring this up because I know that a lot of people are experiencing this. Probably, probably more people than not. And like I said, you only have to turn on the nightly news and see that we are in not just rupture. I think the rupture's already happened. And I think the collapse, you know, the war, the gas prices, the political arena, the religious things that are happening, you know, it's it's collapsing. Doesn't mean it's everything's just gonna completely vanish. I just feel like the structures do not fit where we're heading. But I think we, you know, we've we're evolving and those old structures don't don't suit that evolution, you know. And I think, you know, like I said, I I'm I feel like something different is emerging, but there's also kind of this space between, right? Where you no longer um know who you are, but you're not yet, you know, quite who you're becoming. That's that's where I'm at. And it it's I don't have a lot of patience. I don't have a lot of patience. And I keep thinking, I just want to be done. I'm tired. I'm so damn tired. It it's not even funny. I am wore out. And it's like, I just want to be done. I just want to be done with this. I just don't, I just don't, you know, I don't think that's quite how it works. And like I said, sometimes the collapse isn't yours. You get to a point now, I I I'm looking around and I'm seeing where people are rupturing and I'm seeing where they're collapsing. I'm going, yep, yep, I recognize that. I recognize that, right? I can I can see that's a that's a rupture right there. There's the first crack. And then I'm just staying present. I'm staying present. And you're gonna undoubtedly be watching your loved ones unravel, watch people question their lives. You're probably doing it yourself, watching the systems change, watching old coping mechanisms stop working, you know, your bag of tricks no longer works, the horror. And for me, you know, my old pattern would have been, you know, how do I stop this? How do what do I do? Do I need, you know, to go do the meditation, go out and hug a tree barefoot, and you know, and now I'm just like, how do I just stay present within this? How do I, how do I not collapse into somebody else's rupture or collapse into somebody else's collapse? Because maybe, just maybe, there's something so much better on the other side of this for them, right? Like I don't wanna, I don't want to interfere with it. I don't want to interfere with their process. You know, it's like like taking a cocoon and ripping the butterfly out of it before it's ready, right? That's a that's horrible. Doesn't that sound like a terrible thing to do? So this is kind of how I'm seeing it as I'm watching the people around me because I now recognize it. I recognize what's happening, and I'm just staying present because the best thing I can do is just sort of anchor this and be like, yep, let them have their process. I'm here, I'm not gonna be freaking out. So they can look at me and say, okay, it must not be too bad because Melinda over there, she's breathing deep and she's looking calm as a cucumber. So maybe I'm okay. And maybe I just need to ride this out. And that's the trick. Stay incentered, remaining present with it. You can support without rescuing, witness it without absorbing it, and practice compassion without entanglement. Do not involve yourself because the minute you do, then you're in it. Now you're back in the collapse. And that's difficult. It's really difficult to look around you and watch others when this is happening, but it's really important to let them have their rupture and their collapse. I think it's really important. You definitely don't want to mess up their emergence. I don't know. I just wanted to, I just wanted to point that out because boy, since I've kind of come through the darkness, you know, I'm I feel like I'm at the light at the end of the tunnel and and it's not exact it's not a freight train. So I'm really happy about that because it sure felt like one. But now I'm sort of witnessing it all around me and I'm going, okay, yeah, I recognize that. It's not always exactly the same, but it sort of has the same vibe, same sort of look. And I'm just being present and I'm just staying centered, and I'm just trying to be an example of you too can do this, you can do it, you can make it through this. You just you gotta let go, you gotta, you gotta let these things go because there's probably more than likely something really brilliant on the other side of it, whether it's personal, the people around you, or the crap you're seeing on the news every day. This is not all for naught. I feel that deeply. So anyway, thank you for joining me here on Star Women Rising. If today's conversation stirred something in you, trust it. That's your fire awakening. This podcast is part of the Chicology Collective where women everywhere are reclaiming their voice, their power, and their light. Be sure to subscribe, share this with a soul sister, and explore more shows under Chicology because we rise higher when we rise together. Till next time, keep reaching for the stars and rooting deep in your power.