When the Life You Built Breaks Your Heart (and Your Body Says Enough)

Julie Jessee
Sep 16
8 min read

The Athlete in you got you here — But now, she can’t take you there

I’ve always been a swimmer.

Not just in the pool — though yes, the smell of chlorine lived in my hair for years, and I honestly kind of love the smell. Sorry, not sorry for showing up to meetings, and classes, and client sessions with what to most is a repulsive stench. For me, it’s home.

And of course, there were the stopwatches marked my every move — not just in the pool and in races, but in how I approached life.

Head down. Push harder. Keep going. See how fast you can go. And for me, I was usually pretty fast.

That mindset became a Map that carried me through straight-A school years, an NCAA D1 swim career, into professional life as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and into pivot after pivot into various identities and roles as a coach.

I built a thriving clinic, collected degrees and credentials, became the mentor and the guide. Later, I scaled a 7-figure coaching business.

On paper, it was golden. The map had oriented me to greatness.

But inside, my body was whispering: something is off. This isn’t the trail you’re supposed to be on.

First, it whispered in small ways.

The hollow feeling in my chest before walking into a client session I’d created but I was dreading.

The lump in my throat as I stared at a week jammed full of commitments I wasn’t excited about.

This was especially heightened every Tuesday. I don’t know what it is about Tuesdays, but since college I have hated Tuesdays. So far from the upcoming weekend. So much on the list. So much going on.

My body also whispered in the restless nights scrolling my phone, swallowing melatonin to try and calm my troubled mind which wondered, “How long am I going to be able to keep this up?”

At first, the loudest wake-up call came – cancer.

At 31, a grapefruit-sized tumor overtook part of my lung. Surgery and treatment cracked me wide open — body, heart, spirit.

And here’s what I learned there:

Life isn’t sink or swim. Life is sink and swim.

The sink isn’t failure. It’s where you finally discover the truth about who you are and what’s really important to you.

When success starts to feel like a straightjacket

But then…as it so often does – history repeated itself.

After cancer, after sinking in and rebuilding, and after the million-dollar business, I found myself back in a familiar squeeze.

Pre-cancer, I didn’t have a name for it.

Now, I call it the Conformity Corset — the invisible container stitched together from roles, expectations, cultural scripts. It holds you up — until it starts to crush your breath.

For me, it looked like:

Clenching my jaw and feeling my stomach turn while forcing a smile through conversations that no longer felt aligned with people who were once colleagues, mentors, and friends – but who no longer supported the version of me I was becoming

Scrolling late at night for solutions — labs, supplements, coaches — knowing the real ache wasn’t in my body but in the life and job I’d built to free a younger version of myself … that was now trapping me yet again

Counting the minutes in sessions where clients wanted only the “rules” or the “strategy,” when my Soul longed to work with clients ready to go deeper, to do it their way, to really own their greatness and authenticity and desires without trying to fit into what they thought I wanted them to be or approved of (Gross).

Maybe you know that squeeze too.

And here’s the truth: the squeeze is really easy to label as something you need to fix, or quiet down, or heal.

But it is actually a clue.

It’s a clue that you’ve outgrown the old story but haven’t yet stepped into the new one.

It can feel really tense. It can ache. It can feel like the Upside Down. You don’t know which way is up.

That space in between — the tension, the ache, the not-knowing — is what I call the Valley of Becoming.

The ache of outgrowing your old life

The Valley is brutal in its honesty.

It’s the place where your old life doesn’t fit, but the new one hasn’t fully arrived.

I remember most recently – as Perimenopause and Midlife became my new Valley – I was lying awake at 2 a.m., heart pounding, rehearsing conversations in my head:

Who will be able to hold me if I reveal ALL of these parts of me – the spicy parts. The sensitive parts. The angry parts?

I built this. People look up to me. It’s working. It’s making money. Am I betraying myself and everything and everyone I’ve worked for?

I have invested so much money. I’ve learned some very expensive lessons. Have I lost my mind? Was all of this for nothing?

I remember being roughly 38 years old – a grown ass woman – sitting in my living room chair under a weighted blanket with stuffies in my lap.

My stomach was tight and I was getting ready for a phone call to tell someone I once saw as a ride-or-die that they were no longer a fit for me.

I glanced down at my Garmin. My heart rate – just sitting there – was 137.

I did all I could to ground and gather my breath so I could give voice to this strong, powerful statement. I knew this tension, this shakiness – the catch in my voice – was also a clue. A sign that I was becoming.

I remember the guilt in my chest as I smiled at clients I cared for deeply, even while silently counting down the minutes until the session was over.

It reminded me so so much of showing up for a workout or practice because you once committed to it when you know deep down that’s not actually the brave, self honoring move. You know that your time and energy would be better spent elsewhere.

This is where the athlete in you wants to push harder and just get to the other side.

This is where you might look to doctors, or experts on how to treat the problem you’re feeling, or quiet your symptoms, or optimize your nervous system so you can just keep performing.

This is where you might demand a step by step plan and a guarantee that there will be an end to this.

This is where you might sprint to the next checkpoint, the next midseason competition just to prove that your effort isn’t all in vain … when you also know that perhaps no amount of “proof” or “results” will verify that this just isn’t right for you anymore.

That’s because the depth of the Valley doesn’t give you lane lines or a stopwatch. It won’t prove to you where you’re going or give you the step by step training plan that guarantees success.

It asks you to sink.

To plant seeds in soil you won’t see sprout for months, maybe years.

To let grief, rage, and tenderness break the surface, even when it feels messy.

To stop checklisting your way forward, and instead live your way into the answer.

Because following someone else’s plan is what got you into the Conformity Corset in the first place.

And as a Swimmer – as an athlete – even with coaches and mentors giving you advice along the way – you’re the one who ultimately has to take the step, dive off the block, and make the second by second decisions about where you’re going.

And you can’t know what to do or how to act until you’re in the lane, swimming your own race.

Proof you’re not the only one

I know I’m not the only athlete who has found herself in this valley.

I think of my dear client Holly, who once found herself in this Valley – between her role as a leader in a healthcare practice and an ambiguous role she hadn’t quite put her finger on.

She tried to press on, she tried to just keep doing what she’d always done. Showing up, going through the motions. Practicing, rehearsing, performing. Producing the same outcomes over and over hoping she’d feel differently.

She would repeatedly say – “I’ve built something great. It is better than what I once had. I should be grateful. It’s … fine.”

Her body said otherwise. She described crying in the shower after a long workout, mascara streaking down her cheeks, pulling it together with concealer and supplements so she could show up to work looking like the role model she was to her direct reports.

For her, looking and seeming “Fine” had become her armor.

But once she let herself sink, the truth emerged: she wasn’t broken. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She couldn’t just “athlete” her way through to the other side.

She’d simply outgrown the story she was living.

And then there was Elena — a manual therapist whose chest tightened every time she clicked CPT code 97140.

On paper, it was just a billing code. A code that probably wouldn't even be sent to insurance companies (because all of her clients paid her cash and didn't go to the trouble to get reimbursed). She'd wondered for years "Why even bother with this!?"

In her body, it was a silent scream: this isn’t it anymore.

She tried to wrestle herself into submission – signing up for continuing education courses to give her a new spark of inspiration. But she’d leave there with a brain full of knowledge, a few new ways to touch her clients’ bodies … and a growing frustration that even when she placed her hands on their C-section scars and stretch marks, she was barely even touching them in the way she knew she could.

She didn’t need another certification.

She needed permission to honor the soul-level work she was already doing. And a way to wrap words around it that couldn’t be captured in a 5-digit billing code.

Both Holly and Elena had to sink into the Valley before they could swim forward.

And both of them had the courage to answer the call and do that with me as their witness.

The tool I wished I had when I was in the valley

For me, after cancer, career pivots, million-dollar highs, perimenopause, and countless Valleys of my own — and after guiding thousands of women through theirs — I saw the same truth again and again —

❌ You don’t need another hack to get us through to the other side faster.

❌ You don’t need another protocol that keeps us in our tight swim lanes.

❌ You don’t need fixing or optimizing so that we can just keep performing.

✅ You need a pause. A witness. A map drawn from our Soul.

That’s why I created Soul Story Mapping — a 90-minute 1:1 session to help you sink into what’s stirring, bring it into the light, and leave with a living map that points you toward your next chapter.

It’s not a checklist. Not a prescription.

It’s a manifesto and co-created map you’ll carry forward in your own timing.

If your body is whispering This isn’t it …

If you’ve lived your life with an athlete’s drive, you know how to put one foot in front of the other.

You know how to follow directions and read a map. You thrive on vision. You’re used to a plan.

But when you’re in the Valley, the old maps you’ve drawn for yourself (or someone has drawn for you) don’t work anymore.

They become a Corset that strangles you, holds you back, or contains the parts of you that are aching to get out, breathe, and fully live.

This work is for you if you’re willing to be witnessed, if you want to look at your whole life — body, work, relationships, purpose — and finally let yourself exhale.

You don’t have to burn it all down. You don’t have to do a 180 pivot. The athlete in there – she has a lot of wisdom. She knows where to go.

But instead of plowing through, you do have to pause long enough to hear your her whisper what’s next.

Through September 30, when you book your Soul Story Mapping Session, you’ll also receive a second “Sister Session” at no additional cost — so you can circle back, integrate, and strengthen the seeds you’ve planted.

You are the one walking the journey. You are the one putting one foot in front of the other.

I’ll hold the flashlight.

You’ll draw the map.

To big love, wild aliveness, and mapping out the Story of your Soul together,