You Haven't Lost Yourself. You've Just Buried Her Under Everything You Carry.

For years I thought something was wrong with me. Not depressed exactly. Just flat. Going through the motions of a life that looked, from the outside, entirely fine.

Good career. Family of five. A house in the country. A calendar so full there was never a real gap in it. And underneath all of it, a quiet, persistent numbness I didn't have a name for.

I want to tell you what actually helped. Not a theory. Not a five step plan someone sold me. Just what I actually did, in the order I actually did it, including the parts that didn't work.

1. Find the Spark

I didn't start by overhauling my life. I started by noticing what still made me feel something, even a little.

Drinking my coffee on that bench instead of working through it on my laptop. Watching the hares on the field across the road. Finally watching a film I'd been meaning to watch for years. Buying a slightly ridiculous garden figurine for my herb garden. Crocheting a bookmark shaped like a tea bag, for no reason at all.

None of it fixed anything. Each one was a small signal that I was still in there somewhere. When you start doing things that put a smile on your face, that light even the smallest spark inside you, you begin to feel alive again, and that is what matters. Do it enough, and slowly you start to recognise what actually matters to you, and your days begin to carry more meaning.

Some of it worked. Some of it didn't. I went to a thrift store one afternoon, convinced it would be fun, and within five minutes I was overwhelmed, the shop was busy, everything smelled like dust, and I left without buying anything, feeling worse than when I walked in. That wasn't a failure. It just wasn't the thing that day. Another time I got in the car, restless and sad, and drove to the coast on a whim. I sat in the dunes, watched a group of teenagers messing about, watched the tide come in, and cried. It was the good kind of crying. Then a woman sat down in the next dune over, loudly on the phone, and I felt myself tense up, so I packed up and drove home.

Not every attempt needs to succeed for it to matter. What mattered was that I was capable of getting myself somewhere on my own, changing my routines and coming back a little steadier and a little more alive than I left.

2. Change What You Can

At some point I stopped trying to feel better inside a structure that was working against me.

I closed a business I wasn't passionate about and that wasn't sustaining me financially, and retrained as a coach instead (something that lit a spark inside of me). I sold a large house in the country that needed constant upkeep and endless driving, and moved to a smaller one in the city, where my daughters could get themselves to school and their activities. That single change gave me back hours every week, and gave them independence they hadn't had before. And I was able to breath again.

None of this was impulsive. It was recognising which parts of my life I was treating as fixed that weren't fixed at all.

3. Protect Your Energy

For a long time I worked straight through the day without pause and told myself that was just what working looked like.

I started taking real breaks. A coffee outside. A short walk. Reading in the morning before opening my laptop. I traded some of my screen time for a book, for crocheting something pointless and calming, for watching something on TV with actual attention instead of scrolling.

I added tiny amounts of movement I could sustain. Ten minutes on a walking pad, listening to a podcast. A short walk to the shop instead of the car. Two or three short strength sessions a week, because I dislike the gym and was never going to pretend otherwise, but I also know my body isn't getting any younger.

None of these changes were that big, but they shifted something. Together they changed how my mind felt, not just my body. And they redirected my energy back to me.

4. Make Peace With What Shaped You

This is the part most people skip, because it's the least comfortable.

You don't need a dramatic diagnosis for this to matter. A parents' divorce. A pregnancy that didn't continue. Financial fear that lived in a household for years. These things shape how you handle conflict, how you regulate what you feel, how you show up in relationships, whether you can rest without guilt.

For me, this included sitting with the loss of a pregnancy, and needing, eventually, to find some kind of meaning in it. That search and the passing of my mother led me toward spirituality. For someone else it might be religion, or simply time.

Some of this you can do alone. Journaling, reflection, quiet honest conversations with yourself will get you somewhere. But if your thinking keeps circling the same events without ever moving into what changes next, that's the moment to bring in support. A coach for the structural and behavioural side, a therapist or something like EMDR for what's genuinely stuck.

This is the most difficult part of the journey, but it is absolutely worth exploring.

5. Find What It's For

Once the noise settled a little, a harder question showed up. Was I living anything close to what I actually valued, or had I just been playing it small for so long it felt normal.

Finding meaning starts with an honest look at your values and whether your days actually reflect them. Not the values you'd list if someone asked, the ones you can see in how you actually spend your time and energy.

For me this meant training as a coach, something I'd wanted to do for over a decade. It gave me several things at once. I finally learned something I'd postponed for years. I had something real to contribute to the lives of others. And I quietly broke an isolation that working from home in the countryside had built around me without my noticing.

Meaning shows up differently for different people, and it rarely announces itself as one big realisation. Sometimes it is creative expression, learning to paint, to write, to build something with your hands, purely because you want to, not because it serves anyone else. Sometimes it is contributing to something larger than yourself, a cause, a project, a community that needs what you have to offer. For some it is spiritual exploration, sitting with the bigger questions about why things happened the way they did, and what they were meant to teach you. For others it is as simple as finally joining the community you've circled for years, a reading group, a local initiative, people who share something you care about.

For someone else, finding what it's for looks different again. The trip taken without guilt. The class you sign up for with no purpose except that you wanted to. The mother who starts building something for herself alongside her children.

Here I need to name something plainly, because it is important. If you're the kind of woman who's spent years looking after everyone else, be careful using "helping others" as your route back to yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and helping that comes with nothing returned isn't the same as finding meaning. It's often just the same old pattern wearing a nicer name.

6. Connect with others

This came last, and it was maybe the hardest. Reconnecting with others while you are in hermit mode, overthinking and soul searching, takes real courage.

I asked a friend to take me to lunch every now and then, and told her plainly it was because I was struggling. I joined a training with other people in the room, partly because I wanted to learn, partly because I needed to be around people again. I stopped waiting for the to-do list to be finished before I allowed myself a proper conversation over coffee.

That list is never finished. If the rule is you only rest once everything is done and everyone is cared for, you will never rest at all, and you will never let anyone close either. Letting people in means saying the plain version of what you need, out loud, before you have earned it by finishing everything else first.

What I'd Actually Say to You

Six things. Find the spark. Change what you can. Protect your energy. Make peace with what shaped you. Find what it's for. Let people back in. None of it required a diagnosis.

If you recognise yourself in any of this, you haven't lost who you are. She's still there, underneath the roles. The work isn't finding her from scratch. It's clearing enough space that she can come back.

If you want to work through these six things properly, I've put together a small workbook that walks through each one with real reflection space. You'll find it at kaathelsloot.com. And if you'd like more writing like this in your inbox, my newsletter is where I go deeper.