I want my mom

I had a job interview yesterday that resulted in about an hour of tears and a heart-wrenching desire to call my mom. I can still hear her voice. So clearly. The way she said "Hi honey." Or called me Kimberbee. Poets would describe it as bittersweet. I'm calling it brutal.

My mom was always supportive of my dreams. Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" was an anthem in our house growing up, and while it was written as a breakup song, she embraced its message as a way of living — forging your own path with confidence and conviction.

Open up
Everything's waiting for you

"You can do anything your heart desires Kimberbee," she would say as we walked through Ames Department Store. And even then, as an 8-year-old, I knew she meant it.

I remember when I was 16 and a friend questioned my dream of becoming a magazine editor. I could see my mom holding her breath, waiting to jump in and defend me. Then she watched me stand my ground — and finally started breathing again. Haha! That was my mom. She taught me how to listen to my heart. Set fire to my dreams. And not give two fucks about dissent.

And while I know this architecture still lives inside me, its pillars have been gradually weakening over the past year. And now, with the added weight of my mom's passing, well, it feels like they've given way. I know intellectually that I have not failed. That there's no such thing... that everything is another step that contributes to the whole of becoming. But I feel like I have.

I feel like I am.

Still.

Every day.

I have cried so much in the past year that a constant ache has formed in my tongue, throat, and lower jaw. Tension from being vulnerable, stating my needs and capacity precisely, and yet still feeling unmet. Unseen. Unheard. Unsupported.

I'm so tired. An exhaustion that I feel needs a new name. Because burnout doesn't cut it.

Burnout implies that rest will fix it. It won't.

This is disillusionment — a complete loss of faith. The kind built on accumulated evidence, which, to me, feels like a deeper violation than the blind kind. One that fractures your bones little by little over years.

So many dreams have died and still, more continue to.

If you've been witnessing my journey for some time, you know that for years, I built a business that felt deeply connected to who I was. A true extension of my values, my curiosity, and the way I wanted to move through the world. More than that, it felt incredibly spiritually guided. Divinely led and supported. It was the kind of dream that made uncertainty feel worthwhile because I was participating in something bigger than myself.

In the first couple of years, it was well received. Community came in. The financial support flowed. The devotion was mirrored. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, something shifted.

As I remained committed to my growth, deepening my own level of embodiment, I found myself losing resonance with the work. What once felt aligned started feeling increasingly disconnected from who I was becoming. At first, I thought I was just tired. Then, I found myself unexpectedly needing a new office space and assumed that was the reason. I was to serve elsewhere. But if anything, the lack of resonance just became more pronounced. It was evident that whatever had changed was no longer traceable. Eventually, I adopted the belief that there was some next iteration of the business waiting to reveal itself if only I could be patient and keep investing in what I believed in.

So I did.

I spent a significant amount of my own time, energy, effort and money to support something that eventually, no longer seemed capable of supporting me.

I thought the passion would reignite. I thought the energy would circle back. I thought the work would take a different form.

But it never did.

And despite the latest revisions to the business, it just feels like it's over.

It will never cease to amaze me how even as a 3/5 Manifesting Generator, I'm never prepared for the death or completion of a dream. Perhaps the blindspot is in being someone who was taught to trust them.

What's interesting is that my mom was also a 3/5 and she also lived the contradiction.

When she was my age, she left a successful career as a computer systems analyst and bought a local bakery franchise. On paper, it should have worked. The location was established. The customer base already existed. The business made sense.

But life doesn't care about what makes sense.

The bakery closed.

And yet somehow, despite living through that experience herself, she never stopped believing in possibility.

That's what I miss and need most right now. Her faith. Her ability to approach life with innocence up until the very end.

Knowing her life's journey, quite honestly, I don't know how she did it. Because God damn, the older I get... the more I truly open up and allow life to move me... the more of a challenge it is.

At 46, I have lived enough life to know its cost.

I know what it costs to contort myself into spaces that don't fit.

I know what happens when I ignore my instincts.

I know what happens when I prioritize security over authenticity and convince myself that gratitude should be enough to compensate for misalignment.

I also know what happens when I follow my heart.

I know what it costs financially. I know what it costs emotionally. I know what it feels like to pour years of my life into something I believe in, only to watch it slowly dissolve in my hands, without a fucking clue of how it happened.

I've lived those realities now: the adapted life and the authentic life, the supposed safe path and the meaningful one. The thing is that neither delivered certainty or lasting fulfillment, not that I ever expected them to. (I did expect other things though... otherwise, it wouldn't hurt so damn bad.)

I feel it necessary to make that clear.

Because if I've realized anything over the past two years, it's that we love simple stories. Quit your job and follow your dreams. Or grow up and be realistic. Most advice seems to live somewhere inside those two narratives. But what if neither is entirely true?

What if freedom has its own limitations?

What if honoring your heart doesn't always pay the bills?

What if meaningful work can still leave you exhausted?

What if following your dreams doesn't guarantee fulfillment any more than abandoning them guarantees security?

There are people sitting in jobs they hate imagining that happiness lives somewhere on the other side of risk. And there are people who took the risk imagining happiness would be waiting when they arrived.

Life is more complicated than that.

Every path asks something of you. Every path carries its own kind of grief. Its own brand of joy. Its own genus of evolution, uniquely tailored to the one who lives it. Every path costs something.

So, right now, I am in between. I can no longer fully subscribe to the dreamy subtext that typically accompanies "You can do anything your little heart desires," or continue to hold the old vision. I also can't force myself into a box either. I know too much now. I've lived too much now. I've felt the consequences of those paths in my body.

And so I find myself in a place I've been before but am not so great at... actively waiting.

Not for another dream. Or another mental framework or spiritual ideology.

But something that piques my curiosity... calls forward my life force. And isn't built on self-abandonment or fantasy.

I've lived through enough cycles of death and rebirth to know that's what this season is asking of me.

I still wish I could call my mom though. I wish I could hear her tell me everything's going to be okay. That she'll catch me if I fall.

And that there's something out there waiting for my fire. Maybe something that will build back my faith and innocence too.

I'm not sure I would believe her. But maybe somewhere in our conversation, I'd find comfort in her stories — in remembering that all of this has always been part of the deal. That she never actually knew either.

She just kept going anyway.

And perhaps that's the inheritance that still remains.

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