If you found this page you're probably feeling like someone who's been carrying too much for too long. You kept going even when you were falling apart inside or completely exhausted.
It's a story I know all to well myself.
When I left my dental hygiene career, I didn't leave because I wanted to. I left because my body forced me to. Before that, I was just a sad little dental hygienist who cried on the way to work and on the way home. I would see patient after patient, never a moment for a quick break. I even missed lunch at times just to catch up. I cared for everyone else at work then did the same at home. I ignored myself so much that I stopped noticing I was even doing it. Ignoring myself was the easiest way to make time for everything and everyone else.
In 2019, my second cancer diagnosis turned my world upside down. Even then, my loved ones kept needing me to be the strong one FOR THEM. The one who held space for them and always showed up. And I did it, because that's who I had always been. I didn't know any other way. It like i couldn't say "no."
This role i became didn't start with my cancer journey. It started in childhood, growing up with responsibilities a child shouldn't have, like raising my younger siblings and being held accountable for things I didn't understand at the time as a child. I learned early that love and safety came with conditions. That doing was how you earned your place, and earned love from others. When I finally reached remission, everyone assumed the hard part was over.
"She's fine now."
But no one talks about what comes after "you're fine." How the cancer can leave your body, but survival mode doesn't. How you can be physically okay and still feel completely frozen, restrained by an invisible straightjacket you can't explain to anyone around you.
At the same time, I continued to struggle with resting without having guilt. I even felt this way during my treatment. I kept repeating the same pattern without realizing it. I didn't know who I was outside of being needed by others, outside of my productivity, and of what I could do for everyone else.
Journaling became the only place I could be fully honest with myself. It helped me process the grief of my dad, who I lost as a teenager and the grief of what my illnesses had done to me. I was grieving all of the parts of me that were and would never be. I felt ashamed to discuss this with others, thinking something was wrong with me and maybe I should just "get over it."
Even though I didn't physically die, parts of me did. I had to meet the woman underneath all of it for the first time. I looked for a guided healing journal that could hold that kind of healing. Something that understood the specific exhaustion of caretaker burnout. The identity grief of not knowing who you are outside of what you do for other people. The quiet grief of the life you never got to live because you were too busy surviving this one.
So I created My Heal Journal because it's what I wish I had. I later introduced the With Love Snail Mail Club to help connect with others, bring them hope on their healing journey, and let them know they're not alone. I don't tell you my story for pity or sympathy. I tell you so you know I'm just like you. With pains and struggles I'm still working through. I don't have it all figured out, but journaling my thoughts and connecting with others play a huge role in how I'm healing and moving forward.
If you've been the reliable one, the strong one, the one who never fell apart even when you were, this was made for you. My Heal Time isn't about becoming a new person, but coming back to yourself and actually making the time for yourself. You are worthy of it.
With you, always 💙🪶
Emmeline, Founder of My Heal Time
