Break Down, Break Through

Part I: The Crack is Crucial

Exploring what a breakdown and breakthrough mean to me turned into a much longer essay than I had intended, but it makes sense. It’s a big undertaking: the experience of both, and the attempt to put it into words. My current shifts feel raw and expansive, yet curiously calming.

You’ll discover this with me in each section of this three-parter. We start today at the beginning, with the breakdown. In the weeks that follow, we’ll build on each stage of the journey.

I invite you to join along, and to share any reflections of your own in the comments.

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Is the planet breaking down?
Sounds right.
Are we at the precipice of a breakthrough?
Can we please be near the breakthrough?

What I want to say first: the felt sense of breakthrough is not what we think it will be. The breakdown is more tangible. Felt. Vivid. Cracking open old patterns, old ways of seeking. Fear, grief, anger, anxiety.

Break. Down.
Break. Through.

As an adult, I am slow with my words. I notice how they land. I take time to feel where they tighten my chest, soften my belly or quietly ring true.

As a child, I was easily programmed. I grabbed hold of new ideas, flashy opinions. I believed what I was told. When nothing felt safe, I was desperate to be shown right from wrong, power from weakness, justice from dissonance. I listened to decisive words around me, and made them mine.

Words are programming. Breakdowns are deprogramming.

But chasing loud words or beliefs pulled me outward, and inevitably down. Religion. Substances. A guru promising enlightenment. Down. Down.

No breaks allowed. Don’t let them see you break. Down is evil. Outsiders go down.

This outward path was short-lived. Yoga offered a pause, a landing pad on my descent. Yet even there, I was still looking outside myself. Albeit in more informative and discerning ways. I began to resist authority figures who screamed stories of shame or promised healing. I remember a teacher standing on a student’s low back, another grabbing her inner thighs for a ‘better’ stretch, another pushing toes toward heads as onlookers “oooed” and “ahhed,” and yet another sleeping with disciples. These stories showed me that the part of me looking outside had to crumble. Yoga taught me the ethical value of being an outsider, of refusing to blindly follow, of breaking from the crowd in order to honour my own integrity. These breakdowns would teach me to break away and run. Straight into myself, toward the true voice of authority.

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I had always been running toward myself. I had to break down (freely, inwardly) to find my programming, my voice, new ways to use words, to truly hear the plan. Some of my biggest breakdowns happened far beyond my plan.

And of course, breakdown isn’t easy. It never is. It never goes according to plan. But it isn’t as terrifying as the world insists. The word itself, and what it reveals, are natural. Necessary.

brit kwasney photography

A friend once illuminated breakdown for me with a metaphor: I was sharing my recent upheavals before being led through a breathing session with her, explaining how my body and mind were showing me, yet again, that holding on was no longer an option. It was unstable. Too heavy to rise. The parts I no longer needed were dragging, waiting to fall away. She said something along these lines:

The breakdown is like a rocket ship at liftoff. The first moments are wild and violent, everything shaking, rattling, threatening collapse. It can feel like something is going terribly wrong, as though a crash is imminent. And then, right at the edge of the unbearable, the unnecessary pieces fall away. What remains keeps going - lighter, steadier, soaring. This is the breakdown. This is the breakthrough.

The crack, the edge of destruction, is the only way to illuminate our hearts and higher selves, the only way to see what remains when all definitions and conditions fall away.

Stories must crack.
Beliefs must break.
Systems must split.
Let the program you were fed fail. Let it blast off. The crack is crucial.