The Permanent Address of Numbness: What the Solar Eclipse and Ayahuasca Taught Me About Coming Back to Life.

We tend to think of crisis as a loud event. We look for the breaking point like a screaming match, a sudden crash, or a dramatic collapse that forces everyone to stop and look.

But for a long time, my life was not loud. It was just quiet.

I did not know I was numb until April 8, 2024.

It was the night of the solar eclipse, a moment when the world briefly went dark. I was sitting on the floor on an Ayahuasca journey, and my ex-husband was sitting right beside me. Somewhere deep inside that experience, in a space where the noise of the world completely drops away and only the raw truth remains, I physically reached for my heart.

I literally started rubbing my chest, right over my heart chakra. I was pressing and circling, trying to wake something up. I was desperate to feel anything at all for the man I had chosen to be my husband. Love, anger, grief, sadness, I would have taken any of them.

Nothing came.

The more I reached for it, the more I understood what I was finding, or rather, what I was not finding. My heart was not broken. It was not angry or mourning. It had simply gone quiet. Switched off. It had retreated so far inside itself that even in a state designed to strip away every single defense mechanism, I could not revive it.

That was the moment I understood what the previous years of my life had actually cost me.

The day after that medicine ceremony was one of the hardest days I can remember. It was not because of what the medicine had shown me, but because of what it had confirmed.

Yet, even with that profound realization, I did not plan on leaving my marriage. I actually chose to continue to stay numb. I chose to stay in my marriage because leaving would disrupt too much of my world. I had told myself so many stories to justify staying, and the truth is, I was completely willing to continue doing so. I had not shared my experience from that night with my husband.

But he is a highly intuitive man. A few weeks after the ayahuasca experience, he looked at me and told me he felt like I had one foot out the door.

When he shared that, I did not admit to the numbness. Instead, I told him he knew I had been unsatisfied with many of his behaviors and the way we lived.

What I had not known was how much that single conversation would stir up. It brought up all the shit that had been hiding at the bottom of my mind for years. That conversation put absolutely everything right in front of me, and suddenly, I could not hide from it anymore. I could not pretend. I could not unsee the reality of where I was.

Before that confrontation, I had been walking around in my own life, functioning perfectly. On the outside, everything looked intact. I was managing my career, navigating my marriage, maintaining a routine, and pretending to show up for my community. But the truth was, I had not been able to feel a single bit of it. I was on autopilot.

The numbness had become my permanent address.

When you live in numbness for long enough, your life becomes entirely performative. You learn the language of presence without actually being present. You create those reasonable-sounding stories to keep the status quo because the alternative of admitting how empty you feel is too terrifying to face.

My morning routine back then was a perfect example. Meditate, check. Walk the dog, check. Have my coffee, check. Everything was accounted for, but nothing was felt. I was running on whatever energy was left after survival had taken its share.

A lot of us live here. We call it getting through the day or just being busy. We tell ourselves that once this project ends, or once this season passes, or once things settle down, we will finally have the space to breathe and feel again. But the truth is, we are just sleepwalking. We are driving halfway to the wrong destination before we even realize where we are actually going.

The Body Always Keeps the Score

Before I built my current life in publishing and media, I spent years in a clinical setting as a counselor. I have a PhD in the field. I know the textbooks, I know the theories, and I know how the mind builds walls to protect itself from pain.

But clinical theory does not save you when you are the one on the floor.

Your mind can make up stories to keep you safe, but your body never lies. My body was never confused about what was wrong. It told me clearly and consistently through a heaviness that would not lift, a stomach in constant knots, and an energy that drained out of me faster than I could ever replenish it.

I used to think that once you woke up in life, you stayed awake. I thought that doing personal development work or understanding human behavior meant you were insulated from making mistakes or choosing the wrong path.

It does not. Awakening is not a shield against choosing the wrong environment or staying in a marriage where your spirit is slowly being extinguished.

For years, I negotiated with my body. I smoothed things over, managed the discomfort, and ignored the knots in my stomach. But once that conversation forced me to look in the mirror, I could no longer negotiate.

Thawing Out the Numbness

Knowing you are numb is not the same thing as healing, but it is exactly where the healing begins. You cannot find your way back to something you have not yet admitted you lost.

A couple of months after that truth was placed squarely in front of my face, I finally chose myself. I walked out. I took the leap to fully focus my energy on what aligns with who I actually am. I am too dynamic, too creative, and too extroverted for containment, and I stopped placing myself in spaces that were too small for me.

But the thawing out process was not dramatic, and it did not happen all at once. It happened in the quietest, most ordinary moments.

It happened when I started waking up an hour earlier just to walk my dog, Violet. I stopped treating the morning like a checklist of obligations and started treating it like a choice. I did not have to walk her; I got to walk her. I did not have to sit in silence; I chose to sit because I wanted what the silence gave me.

That is the shift. When you are rushing and disconnected, everything feels like a demand. When you give yourself room, the exact same actions become choices. And choosing your life, even the smallest, most routine parts of it, feels entirely different in your body than just performing it.

Coming Back to Awareness

Autopilot is terrifying because it is so quiet. It does not announce itself. One moment you are there, and then you simply are not, and life keeps moving right along without you in it.

Many women look down at their lives and realize they are entirely inside their heads, missing the sun on their skin and the wind in the trees. If you feel that familiar heaviness, or if you realize you have been checking the boxes of your career, your relationships, or your routines without actually feeling them, know that you are not alone. You are not behind, and you are certainly not broken.

You are simply in the process of peeling back the layers. You are realizing that the costumes you have been wearing no longer fit, and you are getting ready to resurrect the power that has been yours all along.

Catching yourself is not the same as fixing yourself. You do not need to immediately course-correct, over-analyze, or solve everything today. You just need to have the courage to notice that you left, and acknowledge that you were here, and then you were not.

That noticing, practiced over time, is exactly how you come back home to your own life. It happens one small moment of awareness at a time.

With heart,

Soléa