You didn't realize what was happening until all at once you had nothing left.  Your quiet: gone.  Your deep sleep and rich dreams: no more than memories.  Your peaceful happiness: vanished like a wisp of smoke.

Even your words had left you. That was when you knew you had lost a piece of yourself. You sat at your writing desk, staring at a blank screen, waiting for the words to come.  But they never did.  Your well of inspiration was dry, with only a hollow feeling in your chest to remind you that it was once there.  It was as if a piece of yourself was missing and you grasped for it in vain, attempting to summon it back into you.

How did it happen, you wondered?  You trace your steps back through your day, your week, your month, following the breadcrumbs.  It was your stories you let go of first--too tired to allow the ink on the page to be anything more than just that.  Then came the yoga; it was just one more thing at work you had to take care of, then another and another, so that your connection to your body began to fade under the immediate need of making it from one moment to the next.  Your solitude went last.  You found yourself surrounded by people and appointments and noise--all out of necessity, yes, but too loud all the same.  You see it now, how it happened.

And so you begin the arduous process of piecing yourself back together, of calling your soul back to you, of becoming whole once again.  You retreat into your home; you do your yoga; you read; you listen; you heal.