I’ve been thinking a lot about eagles lately.

Not the majestic, postcard-perfect version we grew up seeing on nature shows. No, not the one that showed wings outstretched, gliding on a breeze like healing was effortless.

I’m talking about the real eagle. The one that reaches middle age and suddenly faces a truth it didn’t ask for:

Keep going as is…or break apart to begin again.

This is a story of shedding, screaming, surrendering—and rising again with sharper wings.

I recently came across an inspiring (although disproven) myth about what happens during the eagle’s renewal process. According to this story, around an eagle’s “middle age” years its beak grows long and curved. Its talons become too dull to grasp food. Its feathers grow heavy and matted against its body.

So the eagle does something amazing. It retreats to a mountain. A high, lonely cliff where no one can witness what comes next.

It is here that the eagle makes a choice:

Die or surrender to a transformation so painful it feels like it’s dying anyway.

What blew me away was the part where the eagle breaks its own beak against the rock, and then it waits for a new one to grow. Once its new beak has grown back, it then tears out its claws.

Then it waits again.

And then, if that was not enough torture, it plucks out its feathers one by one until it bleeds.

I cannot even imagine such a horrific, painful ordeal.

Only after all of that—after the agony and the waiting and the stillness—does the eagle rise again. Not as it used to be. But as something reborn.

When I read this, I realized how much this is similar to the journey of healing.

My “mountain” was a long stretch of years filled with trauma, emotional abuse, and the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t just bruise you, it rearranges you. At some point, I realized I had a choice:

Keep going the same way. Or let the old version of me break so the real one could breathe.

And let me tell you—the breaking was not poetic.

No, not the one they talk about, the butterfly emerging gracefully from the cocoon.

There were nights I peeled myself off the bathroom floor and days when I didn’t recognize the woman looking back in the mirror. Seasons when silence felt safer than speaking, and love felt like a risk I hadn’t earned the right to take.

That’s the part people don’t see, the behind-closed-doors version of healing.

The public sees the survivor—the woman who is an author and a nurse. To the world, I was a woman in her power.

But they didn’t see the feathers I had to pluck out to get here.

Or the lies I believed about myself. Or the pain of the generational curses I inherited like unwanted heirlooms.

No, the world did not see the nights I curled up with my journal because it was the only safe witness to my truth. Or the mornings I woke up with a clarity that terrified me.

Transformation isn’t pretty.
It isn’t soft.
It isn’t gentle.

It’s a war with your old self.

A negotiation with survival.
A surrender to honesty.

It’s realizing that everything that once protected you—the silence, the anger, the numbness—is now too heavy to carry. But, like the eagle, healing is deciding to live anyway.

And here’s the quiet part we whisper only when we’re brave enough: That mountain moment hurts like hell. But staying the same hurts worse.

So, if you’re in your own molting season right now—breaking, shedding, questioning, sitting alone on your metaphorical cliff—I want you to hear this:

Nothing is wrong with you.

No, my darling, you are not falling apart.

You are making space. You are letting the old version of you step aside so the real one can return.

So, unlike the metaphor of the caterpillar and the butterfly, I believe healing isn’t about becoming someone new. No, it’s about remembering who you were before the world taught you to doubt your own wings.

Remember, you’re not weak for needing time. Nor are you dramatic for feeling deeply. And like the myth of the eagle on the mountain, you’re not behind for pausing to catch your breath.

Stories get passed down, and although we may lose the original meaning, the lesson is what we must focus on. So think of it this way, in a new light, you’re an eagle on a mountain who is rebuilding your beak, sharpening your new claws, and plucking out the feathers that have weighed you down.

And, just think about how when you rise—because you will—you will not return to the sky as the woman you were.

You will return as the woman you were always meant to be.

Stronger.
Sharper.
Lighter.
Braver.

And absolutely unbreakable.

~