I’ve been sitting with a thought recently. The idea of breaking down… and breaking open. At first they sound similar, almost interchangeable. But the more I’ve turned it over in my mind, the more I wonder if they’re actually very different experiences.
Or maybe they sit somewhere on a blurred line between the two.
Like many of my reflections, this one started in nature. Spring is arriving quietly, and everywhere you look things are forming beneath the surface. Buds are tightening before they bloom. There’s a pressure building inside them, layers wrapped around something that is ready to grow. Eventually, something has to give. The bud breaks open, not because it’s weak, but because it’s ready.
It made me think about how often that same feeling shows up in our own lives.
Pressure builds gradually. Emotion, change, grief, growth. Layer upon layer, sometimes so slowly we don’t even notice it happening.
Then eventually something shifts.
From the outside, it can look like things are falling apart. But from the inside, it might actually be something opening.
The scaffold that held me
I noticed this recently while talking with a friend in a creative space. Those conversations that seem to unfold naturally when your hands are busy and your mind is relaxed.
I found myself describing my grandparents as the cornerstones of my life, the structure that held me steady. Almost like a scaffold I had built myself around.
Their love shaped me, supported me, and quietly influenced who I became. They were always there, solid and dependable.
As they aged, and eventually passed, it felt as though those support beams had fallen away. For a moment that image felt unsettling, like something essential had disappeared.
But then another picture came to mind.
Instead of collapse, I saw growth. Almost as if that scaffold had always been temporary.
Not there to hold me forever, but to support me while I grew strong enough to stand on my own. Without it falling away, the growth would have been stunted. Not intentionally, just naturally.
The support was always meant to be there, and one day it was always meant to change.
The tree
Around the same time, I listened to a poetic meditation by Sarah Blondin that described the boughs of a tree falling away.
Not as loss, but as space being made for light. The branches that once shaped the canopy drop to the ground, decompose, and nourish the roots. The tree changes. The shadows fall differently. The breeze moves through in a new way. But nothing is wasted.
That imagery stayed with me. Because perhaps the people who hold us early in life are like those strongest branches. Helping us grow, shaping our direction, giving us shelter while we find our footing.
And when they eventually fall, it doesn’t leave a fragile sapling behind.
It reveals a tree that has already grown strong within that protection.
Those fallen branches don’t disappear.
They return to the earth, feeding what continues. Their influence is still there, just in a different form.
The tree changes, but it doesn’t collapse. The light reaches new places. The air moves differently. The whole shape evolves. It feels unfamiliar, but unfamiliar doesn’t necessarily mean wrong.
Sometimes it’s simply growth creating space.
Breaking down or breaking open
That’s when the distinction began to feel clearer to me.
Breaking down would be the entire tree falling to the ground.
Breaking open is when parts fall away and allow something wider to emerge.
Both involve change. Both can be painful. Both require letting go of something that once held you.
But one leaves you flattened, while the other quietly creates room to expand.
I don’t think there’s always a neat line between the two. Sometimes things do feel like they’re breaking down, and even then nature reminds us that breakdown feeds growth.
Leaves fall, branches decay, everything returns to the soil.
What looks like an ending often becomes nourishment for something new.
A quieter way to see change
Maybe it doesn’t really matter which one we’re experiencing in the moment. Maybe the gentler question is simply whether space is being created. Whether light is reaching somewhere new. Whether something inside us is being allowed to stretch a little further than before.
I’m beginning to see that many of the moments I once labelled as breaking down were actually breaking open. Not tidy, not comfortable, and certainly not easy. But quietly shifting something. Changing perspective. Allowing growth in a direction I couldn’t have seen before.
And perhaps that’s the thing about growth.
It doesn’t always arrive as something bright and obvious. Sometimes it comes through change.
Through loss. Through the falling away of structures that once held us steady.
Not to leave us unsupported, but to reveal that we are stronger than we realised,
With roots that were quietly deepening all along.
