The Most Authentic Thing I Did This Summer Was 'Disappear'

I thought the hardest part would be surviving the trial.

But it wasn't...The hardest part was what happened after it was over.

I Thought I'd Feel Free

By June, it was done. Two years of preparing, waiting, holding myself together for a date on a calendar and then the date finally came and went, and I was still standing. There were plans. There was relief. There was something that looked, from the outside, like pride. I had made it through the thing I'd been bracing for since before I could remember not bracing for it.

For about a day, I felt free. Then the freight train came.

Not a metaphor for drama's sake — an actual, physical sensation of being run over by something I hadn't seen coming, because I'd spent so long watching the thing in front of me that I never noticed what was following behind it.

My nervous system finally believed the danger had passed. And the moment it believed that, everything I'd been carrying for two years arrived at once, like it had been waiting at the door for permission.

When Survival Ends, Your Body Finally Gets a Vote

There's a reason this happens, and it isn't a character flaw.

When you're in survival mode — real survival mode, not the metaphorical kind — your body prioritizes function over feeling. Adrenaline keeps you upright. Hypervigilance keeps you scanning. Your system quietly files away the cost of all of it, because there isn't room to process while the threat is still active. It just... stores it.

Then the threat ends. And your body, which has been the only truly honest narrator this whole time, finally gets a vote.

"Survival is expensive. Sometimes the bill doesn't arrive until you finally feel safe."

That collapse isn't weakness showing up late. It's the accounting finally catching up and being allowed to happen.

The Summer I Didn't Show Up

No blog. No Instagram. No newsletter. No stories. If you were watching Cove this summer, you were watching a quiet feed and probably drawing your own conclusions. That's only natural.

Here's the truth: I didn't stop caring. My capacity changed, and I let it change what I did without negotiating with it.

The people who actually needed me still had me... My students in teacher training. The small circle of people who hold the parts of my life that can't run on autopilot. That's not a small thing to be able to say — it's the entire reason Cove is built the way it is, in small rooms, on purpose, instead of trying to be everywhere at once.

Everyone who truly needed me still had me. I still had me. That was enough.

My partner, dog, and my mom before a summer sailing trip.

I Used to Feel Guilty

Old me had a script for a summer like this: I should be doing more. I should be posting. I should be proving I'm still here, still working, still worth paying attention to.

Current me has a different sentence: I know what my brain needs, what I need.

Some of that is AuDHD, which I won't turn this whole post into, but won't pretend isn't part of the picture either. My nervous system doesn't recover the way the wellness industry tends to describe recovery: clean, linear, photogenic. It recovers in fits and silences, and if I wait for it to look impressive before I trust it, I'll wait forever.

"I finally stopped confusing consistency with worthiness."

That sentence took longer to learn than almost anything else I teach.

Yoga Never Asks You to Push Through

This is where it stopped being a summer off and started being a practice of acceptance.

Ahimsa

Non-harming. Not just toward other people — toward myself. Not forcing my way through a season my body was clearly asking me to slow inside of. Not overriding the signal because the calendar said I should be productive by now.

Satya

Truthfulness. "I don't have capacity" is a true sentence. Saying it out loud, instead of performing capacity I didn't have, was its own kind of practice — quieter than a pose, harder to fake.

Santosha

Contentment with the season you're actually in, not the one you wish you were in. Not pretending it's spring when your body is unmistakably telling you that it's winter.

Ishvara Pranidhana

Surrender — trusting something larger than your own grip on the timeline. Trusting that silence isn't failure. Trusting that I would return, without forcing the return to happen on a schedule that made sense to anyone but my nervous system.

None of this is abstract. This is what those words actually do when you let them operate in your life, instead of a lecture.

Nature Never Apologizes for Winter

Trees don't defend their bare branches. The ocean doesn't explain the tide going out. Birds don't feel behind schedule for migrating. The moon doesn't owe anyone a full face every night. Gardens go fallow, and nobody calls it laziness.

Everything rests. Everything changes. Everything returns.

Only humans seem to apologize for their own seasons.

I Don't Apologize for My Seasons Anymore

I'm not going to tell you I disappeared this summer.

I honoured what was true.

That's a different sentence, and it's the one this whole season was actually teaching me.

A Gentle Question, Not an Instruction

I'm not going to tell you what to do with this. I'll just leave you with what I had to ask myself:

What season are you actually in?

Are you trying to bloom while your nervous system is asking for winter?

What would change if you stopped apologizing for your nature?

Still Here

Cove is starting to fill back in for fall — the classes are returning, the rhythm is picking back up, and if you've been quietly wondering whether now is a good time to come back to your mat, it is.

Not because summer is over and it's time to perform recovery. Because consistency, when it's chosen rather than forced, is where this practice actually does its work.

Yoga has never asked me to become someone else. It has only ever asked me to become more honest about who I already am.

I'm still here. Come find your rhythm with us this fall.

FAQs

Q: Why does collapse happen after a hard season ends, not during it?

A: Because your body prioritizes function while a threat is active and stores the cost for later. Once you're safe, the nervous system finally has room to process everything it filed away — which can feel like falling apart, but is closer to finally being able to.

Q: What does ahimsa mean in the context of rest?

A: Non-harming applied to yourself — not forcing your body past what it's telling you, not overriding exhaustion because a schedule says you should be further along.

Q: Is stepping back from showing up online a form of yoga practice?

A: It can be, when it's rooted in truthfulness about your actual capacity rather than avoidance. The practice isn't the absence — it's the honesty behind it.

Q: How do I know what season I'm actually in?

A: Usually by noticing where you're forcing. If you're pushing yourself to bloom, produce, or perform recovery on a timeline that isn't yours, that friction is often the clearest signal of the season your body is actually in.