When You Don’t Bounce Back: The Quiet Truth About Losing Your Spark

For months after my surgery, I kept telling myself the same story:

“This is the week I get back on track.”

In December of 2023, I had surgery to remove a large tumor, which resulted in a total hysterectomy. The recovery was long, painful, and complicated. Physically I was healing—but something inside me felt permanently altered. I thought I’d bounce back. I didn’t.

Every Sunday night, I’d sit with a notebook, full of guilt and resolve.
I’m going to wake up early. I’m going to get back in the groove. I’ll find my passion again. I’ll finally show up the way I used to.

But Monday would come. And nothing inside me would turn on.

I wasn’t lazy.
I wasn’t ungrateful.
I wasn’t even unmotivated, really.

I was empty.

My body was tired in ways I couldn’t explain.
My brain felt like it had lost the ability to fire.
The things that used to excite me felt like they belonged to someone else.
And every time I couldn’t pull it together, I sank deeper into shame.

Because somewhere along the way, I learned that my worth was tied to my productivity.
That showing up with energy and ideas was my job.
And when I couldn’t deliver that anymore—I thought I was failing.
So I tried to balance the scale in other ways. To over-give in places that didn’t require creativity, just compliance. I told myself, “If I can’t do the big stuff, I’ll at least make myself useful.”

Looking back now, I realize what was really happening.

I wasn’t failing.
I was unraveling.
And underneath that unraveling was the beginning of something new.

Because healing doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like stillness.
Sometimes it looks like grief.
Sometimes it looks like sitting in your living room on a Monday morning, wondering why the fire you used to feel is gone.

It took me months to stop trying to “bounce back.”
To stop treating my burnout like a detour.
And start accepting it as a message.

What I’ve learned is this:

Sometimes, your body pulls the emergency brake not to punish you—but to save you.

Sometimes, you’re not supposed to bounce back.
Because the version of you you’re trying to return to was never sustainable.
And the spark you’re looking for isn’t gone—it’s just buried under years of overfunctioning, performance, and pain.

You’re not broken.
You’re not failing.
You’re unburdening.

And when you stop trying to be who you were,
you finally make space to become who you’re meant to be.