The Dark Night of the Soul (aka My Unplanned Spiritual Breakdown)

When the last five years of your life feel like an extended stay in rock bottom’s basement, you start to wonder if there’s a punch card for this level of chaos.

I once read that people in their mid-30s to early 40s often go through something called a “dark night of the soul.” Apparently, it’s a phase where your old identity, beliefs, and coping mechanisms stop working — and you’re forced to rebuild from the inside out.

So basically, a full-system reboot for the human spirit.

And if that’s true, I’m an overachiever… because I started mine at 34.

So, What Is the Dark Night of the Soul?

The term comes from a 16th-century Spanish poet and mystic named St. John of the Cross, who described it as a period of intense spiritual desolation that ultimately leads to transformation.

Modern psychology translates it into something more relatable: an identity crisis meets emotional excavation.

It’s the moment life stops responding to the version of you that you’ve been — and starts demanding the version you were always meant to become.

It’s not just sadness or burnout.

It’s more like your soul saying, “Nope. We’re not doing survival mode anymore.”

The Rock Bottom Years

For me, it started with loss; my husband’s death, the unraveling that followed, and a grief that didn’t just break my heart, it rewired my brain.

From there, it was like life kept throwing bonus rounds of “character development.”

💔 Grief.

🔥 Relationship chaos.

💸 Financial stress.

🐍 Betrayal, healing, repeat.

At some point, I stopped waiting for the “good part” to come back and just started asking, “Okay, what is this trying to teach me?”

That’s when everything shifted.

Why This Seems to Hit in Our 30s–40s

Here’s the wild thing: it’s actually common.

Psychologists call it the midlife transition, but spiritually it’s the same vibe as the dark night of the soul.

• Your 20s are about building: your career, relationships, and identity.
• Your 30s are about realizing half of that was built on survival patterns.
• Your 40s are about tearing down what no longer fits and starting again, but with actual self-awareness.

It’s not punishment. It’s initiation.

You’re shedding old skins, illusions, and expectations that were never really yours.

And yes, it’s messy. But it’s also the reason your future self will finally feel real.

The Beauty in the Breakdown

The dark night of the soul isn’t about losing yourself.

It’s about losing the illusion of who you thought you had to be.

It teaches you:

✨ How to sit in silence without falling apart.

✨ How to find peace even when life doesn’t make sense.

✨ How to rebuild from truth, not performance.

Eventually, the light does return, not because everything magically gets better, but because you stop needing it to.

If You’re in It Right Now

You’re not broken.

You’re being recalibrated.

It’s not a midlife crisis. It’s a midlife awakening.

And yeah, it’s brutal, but it’s also beautiful once you realize that what’s falling apart was never meant to last.

The trick is to stop fighting the unraveling and start asking: Who am I becoming because of this?