Found in the Fracture

on what opens when we stop holding it all together

You get good at carrying it. The ache, the effort, the silence. It lives beneath the surface, tucked into your pace, your posture, the way you keep going without asking for much. Until one day, something slips through. A sentence. A breeze. The way the bark has pulled back on that one tree near the bend. You feel it, this isn’t strength. It’s self-protection. Maybe, just maybe, something inside you is ready, tenderly, quietly, to be seen.

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There’s a tree just off the drive, at the bend where I turn in and out each day. It stands on the edge of our land, half-shadowed by the others, but close enough that I could reach out and touch it if I stopped the car. I didn’t notice it at first. Not really. For a long time, it was just part of the backdrop, one of many. But then last spring, I saw it,  a long split down the trunk, rough-edged and silent, like the mark of something that never fully healed.

It must have happened in a storm, maybe a heavy snow or one of those fierce mountain winds that comes without warning. The bark had pulled back slightly, exposing the raw wood beneath. A wound, held in plain sight.

But the tree never fell.

It stands still. Rooted, weathered, bearing its fracture like a story it doesn’t try to hide.

I pass it every time I leave home and again when I return. Lately, I’ve been seeing it differently, not as damaged, but as brave. Not broken, but open.

Maybe that’s the invitation.

I’ve kept most things in for as long as I can remember. Not to hide, but to hold, as if speaking them aloud might shatter the stillness I’d come to depend on.It wasn’t one moment that taught me to tuck things away. It was more of a layering, a quiet collecting of small reasons to stay quiet. A look. A laugh. A moment when tears were too much for the room they entered. I was a sensitive child—wide-eyed, tender-hearted, always feeling too much. Somewhere along the way, I absorbed the message that vulnerability could unsettle the air. That softness made things feel fragile so it was better, gentler to carry it quietly.

Not because anyone meant to hurt me. But because the world doesn’t always know what to do with someone who feels deeply. So I learned to carry things inside. To nod when I wanted to cry. To smile when something cracked. Vulnerability, I decided, was something you earned the right to share, but only once it looked more like strength than need.

I got very good at that,  being okay, holding it together, telling the story only after I’d made sense of it.

Then life grew heavier.

There were things I walked through that couldn’t be named in casual conversation. Real heartbreak, real grief, the kind that rearranges you. The kind that teaches you how to brace before anyone even asks if you’re alright. There were hospital rooms and diagnoses. Sleepless nights and unspoken fears. Much loss, seasons where I carried everyone else’s needs like they were mine alone.

There wasn’t space for falling apart, only for showing up.

When you live long enough like that, guarded, holding everything in it becomes second nature. Not out of pride, but survival. Not out of fear, even, but necessity. You become the steady one. The strong one. The one who listens, who handles, who keeps moving.

But the cost is high.

Because while grief hollows you out, it also hardens you, if you’re not careful. You learn how to keep the door closed, not because you don’t long to be known, but because opening it feels like letting the flood in.

So for years, I lived that way. Carrying on. Managing. Smiling. Keeping the ache folded tight in the quiet corners of my life.

But lately, something’s been shifting.

Not in a falling-apart kind of way, but more like loosening. A subtle unspooling at the seams.

There are days when I catch myself crying without warning. Not from sorrow exactly, but from the sheer weight of feeling again. A song, a breeze, a small kindness. I don’t rush to tuck it away anymore. I let it rise.

In conversations, I  used to sidestep, but I’ve started to speak more openly. Not the polished version, not the after-the-fact story with a tidy bow, but the raw middle. The ache. The still-unfinished story. Sometimes my voice trembles. Sometimes I pause too long, searching for words. But I say them anyway.

It feels like something holy. Like I’m no longer trying to protect people from my pain. Or myself from their witnessing.

I think I’m learning, slowly, tenderly, that vulnerability isn’t the undoing I once feared. It’s the doorway. The threshold. The place where healing actually begins.

Now, when I pass that split tree at the bend in our drive, I see it differently.

I used to think strength meant staying intact. Meant holding it all in, untouched, unbothered. 

Now I look for the signs of life inside the fracture. 

The way the bark edges curl gently away. The soft green moss gathering at the base. The way light settles on the wound, not around it.

I used to hide the places that hurt.

Now, I am learning to let them breathe.

What if the cracks are not what undo you, but what lets the light spread?

This may not be about being brave or fixed or endlessly strong. Maybe it’s just about showing up as our whole selves, letting our lives be a little more unguarded, a little more honest, a little more real.

In doing so, we make room for something deeper than safety.

It’s here, in the splitting open, that we are most gently held.

P.S. In case you missed it—

The House of Embers is open now.

A quiet place to gather, to write, to return.

The 30% off annual sale has been extended through Monday, May 26.

I’d love to welcome you in.

Questions? Leave a comment!

JOIN US TODAY!!

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Kindling: A flicker of thought. A small moment waiting to catch light. A place to begin, not to rush past, but to rest within. This ember is here for pausing for warming your thinking, your noticing, your remembering.

Today’s Kindling: OPEN

What part of you have you kept hidden, not out of shame, but out of habit or self-protection? What might it look like to let that part breathe?

Can you name a moment recent or remembered when you felt safe enough to be fully honest? What made that moment different?

Write from that place.

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Let’s meet in the comments.

I’d love to hear what this stirred in you.

What you’re holding, what you’re loosening, what you’re beginning to name.

Let it be unfinished. Let it be tender.

There’s room for you here.