The space that held me

I had a nervous breakdown.

It isn’t a clinical term—it’s more of a cultural shorthand for what happens when your ability to cope completely unravels. It usually describes a point where stress, burnout, emotional overload, or trauma becomes so intense that your body or mind forces a stop. You can’t function the way you used to. You might cry all the time, struggle to eat or sleep, forget things constantly, feel detached from yourself, or be overwhelmed by even the smallest tasks. You might feel physically ill. You might not feel anything at all.

I retreated.

It wasn’t planned or polished. Just a pause. A breath. A few days where someone else cooked, washed, laundered, made the appointments, set the schedule, and got me into bed early. All I was allowed to do was rest, reset, and calm my poor, overloaded nervous system—which had been on high alert for months, possibly longer.

That small window of time gave my body permission to drop out of the sympathetic charge that had been running the show. I stopped waking in the middle of the night in a panic. My digestion started to return. I could track a full thought without bracing for interruption. My shoulders came down. I wasn’t immediately reactive, or tearful, or clenching my jaw. I wasn’t parenting or performing or fixing. I was just… still.

And in that stillness, I began to repair.

It reminded me of something Helena — a Balinese healer I’ve worked with at Tri Desna — said to me during our February ceremony. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “You have to be happy. If you don’t get happy, I’m going to haunt your dreams.”

She meant it. Seriously. As a warning.
The cracks were already forming, and she could see it. I couldn’t. Not clearly.

But I thought of her every time I lay in that unfamiliar retreat bed, crying softly, arms instinctively searching the sheets for the warmth of my children. The grief that came wasn’t just about this moment — it was cumulative. It was old, layered, inherited.

There is a specific kind of depletion that many women experience, slowly and silently, across the arc of their lives. It accrues over time. It’s not just about overwork or motherhood or partnership. It’s the internalised expectation to accommodate. To soften. To stay.

It’s the suppression of anger in childhood. The minimising of pain. The coded language of shame — "too sensitive," "too much," "too emotional."
It’s the heartbreak of abandonment. The dull sting of unequal labour. The covert betrayals, the subtle dismissals. The times she should have said no, but didn’t. The times she did say no, and it was ignored.
It’s the loss of identity after becoming an adult, a mother, a wife, a caretaker.
It’s the grief of waking up in midlife and realising you’ve spent decades editing yourself for the comfort of others.

We don’t always have the language for these things, but the body does. It remembers. And when it no longer has the capacity to keep absorbing the strain, it demands your attention. Sometimes through illness. Sometimes through breakdown. Sometimes through a deep, unmistakable knowing: I can’t keep doing this.

And yet, even in that knowing, women are expected to justify their rest. To explain why they need space. To soften the disruption their boundaries might cause. We live in a culture that rewards self-sacrifice and pathologises stillness. The performance of wellness is prized — radiant skin, high-functioning nervous systems, calm exteriors — but actual healing? That’s harder to commodify.

From a clinical perspective, this dynamic intersects with the objectification and instrumentalisation of the female body. From adolescence onwards, women are socialised to associate their worth with utility and appearance. We see this reflected in the way health systems deprioritise female pain, in the diagnostic bias surrounding women’s mental health, in the ways ‘self-care’ is marketed as consumerism rather than recovery.

Rest, in this context, becomes not only personal but political. To claim it — unapologetically — is to challenge the entire framework.

That’s why this work matters to me.
Not because I wanted to run retreats.
Not because I thought the world needed another relaxation holiday.

But because I saw my friend break.
I saw her become a shell of herself — capable, smart, giving, but ground down to almost nothing. And I wanted to create a place where she could put herself back together. Where she could access the kind of support and sacred restoration that doesn’t vanish when she flies home. Where she could learn tools that anchor her when life gets chaotic again.

And later, she did the same for me.

She saw how close I was to the edge and orchestrated a series of conversations, moments, and nudges that helped me do the thing I didn’t feel allowed to do — build a space not only for her, or others, but for myself.

That’s what Healing Holidays is.

It’s not a luxury.
It’s not a quick fix.

It’s a living invitation to remember yourself.

To pause — before you break.
To reclaim the parts of you that got left behind in the scramble to be everything for everyone.
To rest.
To repair.
To re-enter your life not as a ghost of the woman you were — but as the woman you were always becoming.