How to Find Yourself Again After Years of Losing Yourself (This Is What Coming Back Looks Like)
“I didn’t fall apart. I functioned beautifully. But inside, something had dimmed.”
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This is the part nobody prepares you for. You don’t notice yourself disappearing while it’s happening. You’re still functioning. Still needed. Still showing up. And yet, something in you has gone quiet.
There was no single moment. No dramatic turning point I can point to and say: that's where I lost the thread. It was quieter than that. Slower. The way a room dims when the light changes so gradually you forget what brightness looked like.
The life I was living
For over 20 years I've had a demanding career. For 14 of them, I ran my own firm. I know what it means to carry responsibility. For a business, for clients, for outcomes that matter to people's lives.
Alongside all of that, I had a creative life I refused to let go of. I trained as an actor. I interviewed filmmakers, went behind the scenes on productions I loved, and created my own work — including developing my own series. It wasn't a hobby I squeezed in around the edges. It was a whole other life running in parallel, powered by genuine passion.
I was doing a lot. I knew that. But I loved it. All of it. The pressure, the creativity, the sense of being fully invested in things that mattered to me.
From the outside, my life looked full.
It was full.
And still, something quietly went missing.
Motherhood
When I became a mother, I loved it completely. Fiercely. That part is true and important.
But motherhood has a way of consuming you so fully that one day you look up and realise the woman you were before has gone very quiet. Not gone. Just quiet. Waiting.
Gradually, the things I did purely for myself — the acting, the writing, the creative projects that fed something essential in me — stopped getting time. Not because anyone took them from me. Because there was nothing left at the end of the day to give them. And because, somewhere along the way, I had stopped putting myself on the list.
I functioned beautifully, actually. I was capable. Reliable. Needed. But inside, something had dimmed. A quiet resentment started to build — not toward anyone else, but somewhere deeper. Like I had slowly stepped away from myself and didn't know how to find my way back.
I sat with that realisation longer than I want to admit.
When my body made the decision I hadn't
Looking back now, I don’t see it as random. I see it as the moment my body stopped letting me override myself.
In 2019, my body stepped in.
Quietly at first. And then not quietly at all.
Vertigo.
Vestibular migraines.
Hyperacusis.
The first two you may have heard of. Hyperacusis, not many people have. It's a rare condition that makes normal, everyday sound physically painful — a running tap, a wrapper scrunching, a child crying. It turns ordinary life into something your nervous system simply cannot tolerate.
I went from managing everything to not being able to get out of bed. I couldn't work. I couldn't care for my children the way I needed to. I saw specialist after specialist — ENTs, audiologists, neurologists. Tests. Scans. Appointments. And still, no real answers.
There is a particular kind of fear that comes from being unwell and not knowing how to fix it.
Then a new baby arrived. Then a pandemic. The life I had built around capability and output came to a full stop — and for the first time in my adult life, I had stillness I hadn't chosen and couldn't avoid.
What I understand now (and couldn't see then) is that my body wasn't failing me.
It was trying to speak to me.
Years of pressure. Of being last. Of holding everything together while quietly disappearing inside it. It had been building somewhere I wasn't looking.
What coming back actually looks like
I'm not writing this from the other side of a transformation. I'm still in it. And honestly, I think that's more useful — because this is where most of us live. In the middle.
The last specialist I saw gave me a recommendation that felt almost insultingly simple at the time: fifteen minutes a day, alone, doing something grounding. Just for me.
I'm not sure I will ever be completely "better." But I can say this — when you go from not being able to get out of bed for days at a time to living a mostly normal life, you feel grateful in a way that's hard to explain. And you stop taking the small things for granted.
Coming back to yourself isn't dramatic. It doesn't require you to leave your life or burn anything down. It starts much smaller than that, and much quieter.
Writing again, even just a few pages in a journal that feels grounding to hold.
Reading something you actually want to read.
Sitting still long enough to hear your own thoughts and focus on your senses.
Remembering what you like.
Letting yourself matter — even a little.
A series of small choices that say: I matter too.
Why I built this space
Because I kept looking for something that felt like this and couldn't find it.
A space that understood what it's like to be genuinely accomplished, genuinely capable, genuinely giving — and still feel quietly undone underneath it all. Not because anything is wrong with you. Because you've been last on your own list for a very long time.
Blooming Back to Me is for women who are holding a great deal together and quietly wondering where they went in the process. It's not about reinvention. It's not about becoming someone new.
It's about returning to the woman who was always there — waiting, quietly, for you to come back to her.
You’re not lost.
You’re just finding your way back.
And trust me, there is hope.
With love,
Olga
If you’re starting to recognise yourself in this - this is exactly where it begins.
I created something simple to help you take that first step back to yourself.
Small daily practices.
A moment to pause.
A way to begin again.
Nothing overwhelming.
Just a place to start.
If you're ready to find your way back to yourself, this journal will guide you there.
If you felt yourself in these words…
If you're tired of just reading about change and ready to begin it…
I created something for you.
Blooming Back to Me: The Prompt Journal.
A year of guided questions.
A year of honest reflection.
A year of coming back to yourself.
Not all at once.
Just one week at a time.
A few things that help
Over time, I've realized it's often the smallest things that shift how a day feels.
Not big purchases or major changes.
Just a few simple things I genuinely use and keep coming back to.
Things that make ordinary moments feel a little more intentional, a little more like mine.
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