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PREFACE
The dismantling of my life, on the surface, took exactly two years—from the day my ex-husband and I stepped into a therapist’s office to the day I received my last paycheck after walking away from a twenty year career. But the cracks started to show much earlier, in my mid thirties. My decade-long marriage to my high school sweetheart hit another cycle of “we hate each other.” My body began doing mysterious and insufferable things. My two wonderful, overly-scheduled children continued to consume most of my energy and time and were now old enough to change the dynamic of the house. Meanwhile, my demanding career—climbing a ladder that I had been told I wanted to climb—was giving me panic attacks. I had a nagging sense that the tolerable misery I had sustained until then wasn’t going to hold much longer.
Fast forward five dramatically disruptive years, and I was laying the final piece of my old life to rest. I had left my marriage and embarked on a deeply independent, heart-healing journey. I completely revamped my home, my hobbies, my finances, and my time. I nurtured my relationship with my now-teenage children and eliminated most of my other relationships. I began a complete health overhaul and eventually reached a breaking point in my job. I hadn’t intended to quit when I began dismantling everything else. In fact, my career had absorbed my entire identity after I left the codependency of my marriage. But the more I worked on finding and loving myself, the more my anger went away. Then it became clear: my job was just another version of the things I had already cut from my life—a light-dimming, growth-limiting, chaotic environment where I poured all my energy into creating dreams for others while abandoning my own. Work had become another place that triggered my core wounds. The transformative healing I was doing in my personal life brought a new perspective on my professional one.
It took about six months from this realization to burn out completely. Nothing had changed—except me. I had to face the fact that I had outgrown my entire old life, even my job. This was hard to accept. Relationships were one thing; they involved other people. But work—that had been all me. I had once derived all my validation from my career, and now I couldn’t even pull into the parking lot without breaking down. After fourteen years at this company and twenty in the industry, it was time for a change.
After some promising initial conversations, I was buzzing with newfound energy. Maybe I could make this move. My practical mind told me to not leave until I had secured the next thing. Early in my career, I had quit a job and moved across the state without another lined up—it had seemed like a terrible decision at the time (it wasn’t). Plus, now I was a single mother. I had no one to rely on but myself. The problem was, my gut wanted me out now. My tolerance of frustration was at rock bottom.
A financial plan could bridge the gap. I brainstormed scenarios, factoring in bonus money, my budget, and savings to give myself permission to quit. It penciled out. Then, after one more promising conversation about a new opportunity, I decided: the hell with it. I didn’t think the net would appear unless I jumped first. So I did—although it felt more like the universe pushed me.
Leaving was equal parts terrifying and freeing. I had been so fixated on what I didn’t want, I couldn’t identify what I did. Then the word hit me: Freedom. I wanted total control over my life—my time, my money, my emotional stability, all of it. I was burnt out from trying to have it all. I didn’t want it all. I wanted the freedom to figure out what I did want. The high of the first few days at home was intoxicating. It felt like I was playing hooky from life—deliriously fun, yet the looming “future” made it impossible to fully relax.
I had a meeting with a potential opportunity, and three sentences in, I knew it wasn’t going to work out. The more I sat there, the faster I realized this felt too much like what I’d just left—a place where I’d surely abandon myself again. After a few more calls, I had an existential crisis. None of this felt right. My whole body screamed that finding another job, or even going out on my own, was not what I wanted. I had jumped, but instead of a net, a brick wall appeared, and it was telling me this was not it.
I’m a huge believer in intuition, and when I’d trusted mine before, it had always been right. My problem was, I had spent most of my life stubbornly ignoring it, making decisions with my head while my heart was completely disconnected. But this time, my intuition wasn’t giving me a choice. I knew that anything resembling my old life was not an option. Ok, fine. But what the hell do I do now?
I did what any slightly OCD over-thinker would do: I made another budget. I had given myself a buffer, but what if I could stretch it further? I roughed out the math, ruminated over my lifestyle, and scheduled a meeting with my financial advisor. I had a lot on my side: a successful twenty year career, a divorce that had stopped the faucet of spending, (we spent because we hated each other), a big bonus, and a small inheritance I’d nurtured for years. All of this had left me in a prime position. I stretched my financial situation to sustain me for twice the time I’d originally planned, leaving me with the thing I had prayed for: time.
With temporary financial freedom, I gave up trying to figure it all out immediately. After all, there’s no playbook for a forty-one-year-old woman deciding what comes next. Once you age out of the whole “get married and have kids” rhetoric, society deems you useless. Too old to be hot, too young to be wise, too experienced to stay quiet, and too burnt out to give a damn. Render me a menace. There were people out there doing what I was searching for, I just couldn’t find them. And the ones who came close usually lost me with, “And then I found the love of my life.” Ugh. Fairy tales really messed us up. My happily-ever-after isn’t at the top of a corporate ladder or the other end of a dating app. There has to be more to life than corporate greed and getting validation from a partner I didn’t get from my parents. I was desperate for answers—a roadmap. Someone, just tell me what to do.
I realized I needed rest—real rest. I had been caught in constant motion, burned out from years of pretending to have it all. My body needed time to recover from a lifetime of running at full speed. I knew I’d eventually find my way, so I made a decision: this summer, I would stop doing and simply live in joy. I wanted to savor time with my kids, embrace my own peace and freedom, and dive deeper into the healing that had already begun. What followed was a transformative summer—a profound journey of self-discovery, healing, and change. It became clear that despite how much I’d evolved, I was still tethered to old belief systems. Dismantling my life wasn’t enough; it would take intentional action to change my thoughts and behavior patterns. By the end of the summer, I felt a seismic shift in how I viewed everything. I had fundamentally changed.
After the kids went back to school, I spent the day with a friend I hadn’t seen since I’d left my job. As we shared stories about our summers and the similar questions we faced about what was next, she validated something I had sensed all along: I had curated a framework of methods and exercises that could help others. I knew I wasn’t alone in this longing for realignment and clarity. It had been on my mind all summer. I couldn’t be alone in wanting someone to just tell me what to do, give me an example, show me your work. Everything I had devoured over the summer had been miraculous in some way, but it was all so specific. I didn’t want a twelve-week course on just one thing. It felt burdensome to chase it all. Courses for connecting to spirit, classes on somatic healing, workshops on the law of attraction, books about reframing, career coaches, etc. I needed a sampler—different tools that could be personalized for maximum impact, and I needed it now because I get excited like that. At the end of our day together, my friend confirmed what I felt. “You’re exuding happiness and positivity in a way that feels new and different,” she said. I smiled. “I know. I feel like a completely different person.”
I feel ready, finally, to live the life I was always meant to live—with my whole self. I found the missing pieces. I crafted tools that helped me shift belief systems. I learned lessons that replaced old conditioning, and I addressed wounds and traumas. I turned a life I used to be embarrassed by into one I’m not afraid to love. And now I’m excited at the idea that someone out there might benefit from this too.
This book is for those who are already well along their self-love journey— past the affirmations and self-care routines, but still feeling the weight of the final barriers. If you’ve burned away much of your old life, or if you recognize you’re repeating patterns that no longer serve you, this is for you. Maybe it’s level 2, maybe it’s level 10, but there was a decade of self-help and actual help that got me ready for the deep transformation that took place this summer. If you’re there, think of this book as my course notes, handed to you to speed up your learning.
I’ll be sharing the framework that helped me craft a cathartic season of healing, leveraging the skills I’d already developed while just trying to survive, along with my personal story. I encourage you to continue exploring content that resonates with you—read the experts, take the classes, listen to the podcasts. This book is a nudge to help you make the change more efficient. I’m fortunate to have had the time and resources to immerse myself in this journey, but everything I did can be adapted to fit your unique life. My goal is to inspire you to create your own season of healing, uncovering truths you already know.
This book reads linearly, but healing rarely is. I’ve organized what I learned in a general order, but much of the process felt like a spiral, with lessons overlapping. If something doesn’t resonate with you right now, skip ahead to what does. Trust that the path will make sense in time, and the more you listen to yourself, the more you’ll be on the right track. I’ve found that a hundred small things, done consistently, work more magic than one big thing.
I want us all to find that magic.
Paperback and Ebook available.
Lauren Michele Fields 
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