Falling into Becoming

Slipping Through the Cracks: On Burnout, Dislocation, and the Wisdom of Retreat

There are days—weeks, even—when it feels like the scaffolding of life has given way. When exhaustion tugs at your bones, when the demands of family, work, and an unforgiving calendar leave no room to breathe. When illness strikes, when a job disappears, when someone you love walks away or dies. These are the moments we never plan for, and yet they arrive with ruthless precision.

This is not just tiredness. It is a falling away. A dislocation of the soul.

In Jungian terms, such periods of rupture often signal a descent into the unconscious—a kind of symbolic underworld. Like Inanna stripped of her royal garments as she descends into the Great Below, or like Persephone abducted into the silence of Hades, we too are sometimes summoned into darkness. Not as punishment, but as initiation.

These moments do not arrive with clarity. They come masked in chaos, often mistaken for failure or weakness. But what if this descent is not a deviation from the path, but the path itself?

Burnout, depression, and grief can be seen not as enemies to overcome, but as messages from the psyche—urgent whispers that something vital has been neglected.

Our culture’s fixation on progress and performance leaves little room for the necessary pauses of the soul. We forget that even in nature, growth comes through cycles: the seed, the decay, the dormancy, the rebirth.

From literature and myth, we learn that retreat is not the same as defeat. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus spends years in detour, wandering strange lands and dwelling in unknown places. His return to Ithaca is not a straight line but a spiral—each challenge shaping him into someone more whole. The exile becomes the ground for transformation.

Likewise, in nature, the chrysalis looks like a tomb. But inside, unseen, the caterpillar is dissolving, reconfiguring into something entirely new. What appears as dormancy is actually radical change.

In our own lives, these hidden seasons can be the most fertile—if we let them be.

The challenge is to resist the urge to push through. To stop demanding explanations or silver linings. Instead, we are invited to listen. To rest. To dwell in the unknown without shame.

Here, we may find unexpected nourishment: a book that speaks to the soul, a quiet walk beneath a gray sky, the slow unraveling of old habits. These are small mercies that remind us: the cycle continues. Clarity returns, not through force, but through patience.

So if you find yourself weary, if you feel you’ve slipped through the cracks—know this: you are not broken. You are becoming.

The psyche knows its rhythms. And sometimes, the soul needs to turn inward before it can reemerge with new life, so trust your path, trust your own process of falling into becoming.