When Life Forces a Pause — Choosing Yourself Before You Break
It was midnight at the Kelowna General Hospital.
The woman across from me was screaming. Raw, unfiltered cries that cut through the quiet. She had just had brain surgery. The woman to my right had her hip replaced and was snoring loud.
I was wide awake.
I had just had my C4, C5, and C6 decompressed and fused. I didn’t have the time to worry about my mobility at the time.5 The medication hadn’t worn off yet, so there was no pain — which felt strange, considering how much my life had been hurting everywhere else.
I was exhausted. Limping. My neck had been failing me for months. My dad had passed suddenly. And now my mom — my mom — had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer. She had already been in hospice for almost three months.
In a week, I would be back there. Sitting by her bed. Holding her hand. But that night, I was here. In a hospital bed. My doctors told me I needed to take care of myself first.
That meant surgery. That meant leaving my mom in hospice. That meant choosing myself — even when every instinct in me wanted to choose her.
Months before that night, I was unraveling quietly.
Work was relentless. Summer at the hotel. Meetings stacked back to back. Staff issues to manage. Smiling. Holding space. Leading. And then racing straight to the hospice after work, every single day. Even while I was at work, my phone would ring. It was my mom. She was scared. She didn’t want to be there. But she didn’t have a choice.
Neither did I.
I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Barely eating. Barely resting. Carrying grief I didn’t yet have words for. So I went to counselling. Not because I was broken, but because I couldn’t keep holding everything alone.
That night in the hospital, between the screams and the silence, something became very clear. This is what happens when you don’t pause until your body forces you to. This is what it looks like when you keep choosing everyone else until the choice is taken from you.
This is the quiet cost of being strong for too long.
And if you’re reading this and something in your chest just tightened, this part is for you.
For the women who are holding it together on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside. For the ones managing work, family, illness, loss, and expectations — telling themselves they’ll rest later. For the women who are tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix. Who keep showing up because people need them. Because they’re capable. Because they always have been.
I see you. I feel you. I lived the story.
Maybe your pain doesn’t look like a hospital bed and a mom in a hospice. Maybe it’s headaches, anxiety, a body that’s been whispering before it starts screaming. Maybe it’s caregiving, leadership, grief you haven’t had time to feel, or simply being the strong one in the room for too long.
As the new year unfolds, I want to gently ask you something.
What if this is the year you stop waiting for a breaking point?
Choosing yourself doesn’t mean walking away from your life. It means learning how to stay in it without losing yourself. It means pausing before your body forces you to. It means telling the truth about what you’re carrying and choosing a way forward that feels kinder and more sustainable.
You don’t need to be fixed. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need space.
That night in the hospital, I didn’t suddenly become brave or healed. I came out of denial. I chose to be honest.
Honest about how long I’d been running on empty. Honest about how often I’d said, after this… after summer… after the crisis… Honest about the cost of always being the strong one.
And I realized something I wish more women didn’t have to learn the hard way:
If you don’t choose a pause, life will choose it for you.
From that realization came January Reset: The Year You Choose Yourself.
Not as an idea — but as a need. A need for a gentler way to begin again. A need for space that isn’t a hospital room. A need for a reset that doesn’t require breaking first.
From January 30 to February 1, Balcomo – A Ramada by Wyndham will be hosting a retreat offering women the chance to pause by choice. To breathe. To tell the truth. To release what’s been heavy. And to step into the year with clarity and compassion.
It’s not a bootcamp. Not a makeover. It’s for a woman who’s done with being pushed and is ready for a kinder kind of reset.
A reset where she can slow down, tell the truth, rewrite the story, choose herself, begin again.
This retreat is for the woman who is ready for her own homecoming … even if she doesn’t quite know what that looks like yet.
If any part of this story feels familiar…
If your body has been whispering and you’ve been too busy to hear it…
If you want this year to feel different — quieter, steadier, more honest —
You don’t have to wait for the breaking point.
You’re allowed to begin again.
Gently.
January Reset: The Year You Choose Yourself, January 30 – February 1, 2026, Balcomo – A Ramada by Wyndham