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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 "You Can Go Your Own Way" was an anthem in our house growing up, and my mom embodied it.

"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, a friend was challenging my dream of becoming a magazine editor, and I could see my mom just waiting to chime in with back up support. But after seeing me stand my ground, she 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 growing weaker. They were struggling to hold before my mom's passing and now, 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. Burnout doesn't cut it. 

Burnout implies that rest will fix it. It won't. This is disillusionment. Not the dramatic kind where everything suddenly falls apart, but the quiet kind that settles into your bones over years.

Long before my mom's passing, there was another grief consuming my heart... a dream was dying.

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 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. The bookings came in. The financial support flowed. The devotion was mirrored. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, something shifted.

As I remained anchored in my own growth, pursuing the next stage of my own embodiment, I found myself losing resonance with the business. The work that once felt aligned started feeling increasingly disconnected from who I was becoming. At first, I assumed I was tired. Then I assumed I needed a different environment. Then I convinced myself there was some next evolution 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 no longer seemed capable of supporting me.

I thought the passion would reignite. I thought the energy would cycle 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.

Not in a catastrophic way. Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet, undeniable way certain chapters end.

It will never cease to amaze me, how even as a 3/5 Manifesting Generator, I'm never prepared for the death 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 around the age I am now (46), she left a successful career as a computer systems analyst and bought a 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 always care about what makes sense.

The bakery closed.

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

Maybe that's what I miss most. Not her encouragement. Her faith. Her ability to approach life with innocence.

The older I get, the more of a challenge it is to maintain that... not because I've become cynical, but because experience complicates things.

At 46, I have lived enough life to know what it costs to contort yourself into spaces that don't fit.

I know what happens when you ignore your instincts.

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

But I also know what happens when you follow your heart.

I know what it costs financially. I know what it costs emotionally. I know what it feels like to pour years of your life into something you believe in, only to watch it slowly dissolve in your hands.

I've lived both realities now: the adapted life and the authentic life, the safe path and the meaningful one. The strange thing is that neither delivered the certainty they promised.

If I've realized anything over the past two years, it's that people 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 purpose 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?

I think part of growing older is watching these absolutes loosen their grip. Not because they're lies, but because they're incomplete.

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. And every path costs something.

Lately, I feel caught between worlds. I can no longer fully subscribe to the old belief, or continue to hold the old vision but I can't force myself back into a box either. I know too much now. I've lived too much now. I've felt the consequences of both paths in my body.

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

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

Just waiting for a third possibility to emerge. A way of living that isn't built on self-abandonment but also isn't built on fantasy.

I've lived through the cycle of death and rebirth enough to know that's what this season is asking of me. To stop forcing answers. To stop trying to resurrect what has already died. To stop treating uncertainty like a problem that needs solving.

I don't know what's next.

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 just waiting for my fire. Maybe something that will reawaken my faith and innocence too. 

I'm not sure I would believe her. But maybe somewhere in our conversation, she would remind me through her own stories that uncertainty 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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