Why healing sometimes starts with breaking.

When You Can No Longer Pretend It Still Fits
In the previous edition, I wrote about the in-between. That foggy space between what no longer works and what has yet to reveal itself.
Back then, I thought I was right in the middle of it.
And I still am.
But now I feel something else too: that being in-between isn’t just stillness.
At some point, something starts to shift.

That’s where I’m at.

A quiet restlessness.
A sense that I can’t pretend anymore: can’t walk in the same direction just because I always have.
As if something in me suddenly stepped off the path.

And what it asked for wasn’t drama or destruction.
Just space.
For a truth that no longer wanted to stay quiet.

That brought me to the theme of disruption.
How uncomfortable it is.
How necessary.
And how much softness it actually takes to be radically honest.

Disruption ≠ destruction
Disruption gets a bad reputation. It sounds like chaos, conflict, crisis.
But what if it’s the very thing that makes growth possible?

Not everything that hurts is harmful.
And not everything that feels gentle is healing.

We live in a culture that sees disruption as a threat.
In families. In systems. In spiritual spaces. In our own minds.

But disruption is not the same as destruction.
Destruction wants to break things down.
Disruption wants to wake things up.

It’s that internal unrest that won’t let you sleep.
The friend who says the thing you don’t want to hear.
That subtle knowing: this doesn’t work anymore, even if I don’t know what will.

Disruption creates movement.
And movement is the opposite of being stuck.
It shakes you out of what’s familiar but no longer nourishing.
It opens space. It provokes.
It invites renewal. Not because everything needs to break,
but because not everything that exists still fits.

When familiar becomes a trap
We often avoid disruption because it feels like loss.
It shakes things up. It reveals what we’d rather keep hidden.
And so we stay where we are — not because it feels right,
but because it feels familiar.

Especially in spiritual circles, I notice how we sometimes rebrand avoidance as softness.
We say things like: “I’m trusting the process.”
Or: “Everything in its own time.”
Or simply: “The universe has a plan.”

And sometimes, that’s real.
But sometimes, softness is a disguise.
A way not to move.
A spiritual glaze over something that actually needs to shift.

Disruption asks for courage.
To release the known before the new has taken shape.
To admit what no longer feels true, even if it once did.

Rest is sacred.
But not when it keeps you still
in a place that’s asking you to move.

No growth without friction.
No truth without noise.

Disruption as Invitation
If there’s one thing I believe,
it’s that we are built to change.

Our brains, through neuroplasticity, are literally wired to reshape themselves.
But that only happens when we leave the automatic.
Not through thinking or planning,
but through experience. Through motion. Through disruption.

And what applies to the individual also applies to the collective.
Families. Relationships. Communities. Inner patterns.
None of them change by staying stable.

In systems theory, this is clear.
A system, whether it’s a job, a coping mechanism, or a belief structure, maintains itself. It’s designed to survive.
Until something interrupts the loop.
Something it can’t absorb or override.

That’s disruption.
That moment of instability,
when the old doesn’t work,
and the new hasn’t landed yet.

At that point, systems can do two things:
Return to what they know.
Or shift, adapt, evolve.

That second option?
That’s where real transformation lives.
Not as an upgrade of the old,
but as a response to what can no longer continue.

And yes, that includes you.
Your relationship. Your work. Your worldview.

You can only recalibrate your system if you allow it to wobble.

And trust me: I’m not writing this because I’ve mastered it.
I’m writing it because I’m right in it.
Falling, rising, and circling back again.

To read:
Coming Back to Life – Joanna Macy & Molly Brown
A powerful book about how disruption isn’t the opposite of healing — it’s part of it.
Macy links inner restlessness to systemic transformation,
and shows how real change starts with letting yourself be undone.