Healing Over Hustling™: Broken Lenses, Frozen Truth

 

Healing Over Hustling™: Broken Lenses, Frozen Truth

This past ice storm wasn’t just about the weather.

It froze my plans in place — plans I made back in January to finally break old patterns of financial struggle. January was supposed to be my reset. My fresh start. My way of not reliving the financial bondage I’ve walked through for the last two years.

But what I didn’t know then was that stillness was coming.

And in that stillness, revelation was waiting.

These last eight days have been really exhausting.

It started two Thursdays ago, right in between the end of the month and the start of a new one. When the ice storm hit, everything came to a standstill. What was supposed to be momentum turned into pause.

But in that pause, I began to reexamine everything.

My footsteps.
My patterns.
Even my words.

And what I realized shook me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be financially free.
It wasn’t a lack of effort.

It was my heart’s desire to always be the rock.

To be vigilant.
To show up for those struggling.
For those who share my DNA.
And even those who are family by proximity — what I call proximal DNA.

I carry a deep responsibility for the people connected to me.

And while this heart is big, beautiful and full of love … It has also cost me.

On February 1st, I had a moment that brought all of this into focus.

While helping my daughter — an essential worker — navigate through the ice, my glasses fell. I picked them up and tucked them into my pocket, thinking nothing of it.

Later, I realized the frames were broken.

The lenses were safe in my pocket — but the frames that held everything together were cracked beyond repair.

So I did what I’ve always done in survival mode.

I taped them up.

Blue tape holding together something that was never meant to be patched long-term.

And at that moment, it hit me.

I’ve been TAPING over cracks in the frame of my life.

Pushing forward. Holding everything together just enough to function.

SURVIVING!!!! But not healing.

The lenses — my vision, my purpose, my heart — were still intact. But the structure supporting it all was breaking under pressure.

I realized I’ve been using survival tools for wounds that needed healing. This isn’t just about broken frames.

It’s about the broken places we hold together with temporary fixes. The parts of ourselves we tape up because stopping feels impossible. The grind that keeps us moving but never lets us mend.

This journey has taught me something about sovereignty.

About honoring my core self — the part of me created to help, nurture, build, and serve — without sacrificing my own well-being in the process.

Healing Over Hustling doesn’t mean I stop working hard.

It means I stop bleeding while I’m working. It means I stop patching broken places with quick fixes. It means I learn how to show up for others while also showing up for myself. It means shifting from grind culture to wholeness. From exhaustion to restoration. From survival to sovereignty.

These broken frames were more than an accident.

They were a frozen truth. A reflection of what happens when we carry too much for too long. (Also real visualization of burnout.) A reminder that even the strongest structures need care.

And maybe, just maybe, this season of stillness — this ice, this pause, this revelation — is redemption in disguise.

Not punishment.

But an invitation.

An invitation to heal.

This may be my story to tell, but it’s our journey to share.

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