The Earthquake Underneath
There was a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in San Diego last week. No damage, but it was the second biggest one since I moved here. It shook the windows, made the news around the world, and left people buzzing about how long it lasted.
It hit the same week I found out my divorce was finalized. My legal status has been returned to that of a single person. That’s the legalese according to my attorney.
Sigh.
It became official on April 4, one day shy of my 22nd wedding anniversary. No conversation. No ritual. No acknowledgement. Just a sentence in an email that confirmed what I knew was imminent but hadn’t quite prepared for.
I wasn’t caught off guard. The process has dragged on for years, and I’ve been grieving this marriage far longer than that. But still—something about seeing the date in black and white did something to me. It made it real in a new way. It shook something loose that I didn’t know was still attached.
That same week, Easter came and went. I wasn’t alone. I was with my son. But even so, I felt it. The distance. The silence. I wasn’t invited to anything. I wasn’t thought of. There were people I once would’ve gathered with, called, heard from. This year, there was nothing. And I felt it not just for me, but for him. I want him to have family. I want him to feel connected. I want him to grow up surrounded by warmth and tradition and people who remember him on holidays. But this year, there was just me. Tired. Quiet. Trying to create meaning in the absence of the thing I wanted most to give him.
There was a basket full of candy, and we went out for sushi.
In between all of this, two new professional opportunities presented themselves. Not small ones. A fractional leadership role in a space I care deeply about. And an invitation to take over an agency. Two chances to build something new, something real, something mine.
And I have done nothing.
Not because I don’t want them. I do. Not because I don’t believe I’m capable, though that belief has been harder to hold lately. I’ve done nothing because I’m frozen. Because the earthquake wasn’t just external—it’s been internal for a long time. And this month, it finally hit.
My marriage is gone. My sense of family, untethered. And the thing I’ve always relied on to hold me together—my professional identity, my work, the way I show up and perform and deliver—it feels out of reach. I don’t know what I’m anchored to anymore. And without the roles I’ve spent decades embodying, I don’t know how to move forward.
I’m sitting with the realization that the two things I poured myself into—my career and my marriage—are gone. Not paused. Not evolving. Gone. And I am still here, trying to understand what that means.
What’s left when the scaffolding collapses?
Who am I when no one is asking anything of me?
Who am I when I’m not holding a team together, a family together, a version of myself that was built to survive everything but not to be everything?
I know I’m not starting from scratch. I know I have strength. I have survived enough to know I can survive this. But right now, I am in the space between knowing and moving. Between the collapse and the rebuild. Between what was and what will be.
Right now, I’m still under the desk in duck and cover.
Still quiet. Still frozen. Still trying to remember how to take a first step.
And I know I will. I know I will move. I know I will rise. I know I will rebuild—not a replica of what I had, but something truer. Something mine.
But this is the part people don’t talk about. The part where the dust hasn’t settled and you’re still coughing on what was. The part where the emails sit unanswered and the calendar is blank and you’re not sure if anyone would even notice if you disappeared for a while.
I’ve always gotten back up. Always figured it out. Always moved forward.
And I will again.
But this time, I’m not rushing it.
Because this time, everything cracked open. And whatever comes next deserves to be built with intention.