I Feel Empty

In December 2025, my boyfriend and I broke up, well, I broke up with him.

Frankly, I was unhappy. I can’t say the relationship was to blame fully, I think I was just generally unhappy. Unhappy with my job, with my daily life, with the fact that I had to wake up in the morning and pretend like everything was fine. Unhappy with my family dynamics, feeling distant from my friends, feeling like a disappointment to others, yep, general unhappiness.

That unhappiness didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. I think it really resurfaced in 2022, nah, 2020 when me and my other boyfriend broke up, he broke up with haha.

What a mess. I am laughing at myself as I write this out because looking back I’ve learned that instead of dating people I get into a relationship with them, hoping for marriage (I grew up in a home where my parents stayed married and assumed it would happen to me—fun fact, I am not married…yet), but that’s a story for a different time.

In 2020, I moved back home from Baltimore to Little Rock, AR. Sad, lonely, and heartbroken. Fast forward to now, I feel alone, my heart aches, and I feel empty.

Emptiness isn’t a new experience for me. I’ve felt empty before, but usually I’m pretty good at [insert avoidant behavior here] finding a new relationship to entertain me or finding a new city to explore or finding something to change my reality and perspective. Notice I said “find a new relationship to entertain me”. Not a cute pattern, but it was mine. I thrived on distraction and chaos. I would tell people that I feel calm in chaos and it was true. A lot of people have told me that I ground them when things feel chaotic, maybe it’s my super power and maybe it’s a trauma response.

This time, I’d like to try something different. Instead of traveling, instead of uprooting my life to explore a new city, instead of entering another romantic relationship, I'm choosing to sit in this emptiness. And boy is it hard. I can feel the tears well in my eyes now. How can me, Kendra, the person who is full of life, I mean I’m a freaking fairy on my best days teaching about nature and frolicking, how can I feel empty? What do I do with this feeling?

That’s when my human-side confuses me. I’ve been called so many things my whole life: strong, magical, grounded, angel, alien, creative, problem solver—but human was never one of them. So this feeling of sitting in this vastness of nothingness feels foreign, painful, deeper than uncomfortable. It feels like the roots of a plant that are being suffocated by the concrete, growing and stretching, seeking the crack in it so that they may become the rose that grows through the concrete.

I have yet to find that crack and this time, I refuse to rush or hurt myself while making a false crack. I wrote a piece sometime last year called, Navigating the Space in Between, but I didn’t know that I’d be in that space this long. That piece felt poetic, but this experience feels cold, dark, quiet. It feels like the season of winter. I do not like the winter. However, I dp recognize that winter is an important season during the natural cycle. That sometimes we need to quiet, cold, dark to become who we need to become. No outside forces, no external reflections, just ourselves.

There are small moments of joy and that’s what keeps me going. Like today, I ran into my younger cousin at Target or earlier I broke out in song with a garden friend singing “Let it gooo, let it gooo” from Frozen or a new craft has been making earrings.

Slowly, I am learning that this emptiness feeling is the space where the shedding lives. It is the process of evolving from our old selves into our new ones. The quiet space between life chapters that often goes unnoticed by others, but is extremely loud to ourselves. It’s the part of the journey where we decide, can I really be with myself and find happiness within? Can I find a way to be okay with the nothingness, when everything feels so loud?

• Will I choose to be patient with myself as I figure it out?

• Will I accept where I am right now and not rush to find a “way out”?

• Will I allow myself to be still enough to notice what my evolved inner voice sounds like?

• What is this season of life trying to teach me and how can I lean in?

And after the stillness, the loud loneliness, and quiet pain, can I accept it all for what it is without creating a false reality around it. My imagination is a vivid one. One that has allowed me to create a fairy-inspired art and nature based business and also one that has fallen into magical thinking in relationships. Yet, I am learning as I sift through this soil beneath the concrete, that maybe the coolness can be comforting. Now the silence feels like peace—this is new for me.

I feel like I’m getting closer to breaking through the concrete as a seedling to start a brand new life, brand new way of being. I can’t say it feels good yet, but it feels calmer, quieter. I am learning how to be there for myself, depend on myself, and use my support system wisely. How to seek refuge in my healthy outlets like walking and gardening. Trying new activities like Dungeons & Dragons and joining a kickball team. Some things I attend only once and others I return, and that is okay.

Slowly, I am realizing that maybe the space in between is just called life. We are constantly in between phases of growth, loss, stagnation, or in the terms of the moon waxing and waning. It’s something I know, but recently it’s been something I feel. I’m sharing my story on these pages because not everything is always as it seems and that is okay. You will see me posting about Black Fae Day and nature videos on social media, and also know I’m navigating so much more behind the curtain.

For those who are existing in this space, just know that I see you. Leaving some affirmations here as you process, wax and wane. Ok, love you, bye.

Affirmations

1. I accept myself for who I am and love me fiercely

2. I am allowed to pause, rest, and breathe; I do not have to rush to the next step.

3. There is wisdom in slowing down and gathering myself before moving forward.

4. I am not falling behind; I am simply honoring my own timeline.

5. I am allowed to exist here, in all my mess and glory.

Take care my dear, dear friends.

Love,

Lavender the Herbal Fairy

Lavender the Herbal Fairy is a mixed media creative at heart, but they also are a community gardener, apiarist, herbalist, painter, writer, fairy nature educator, critical thinker, and friend. they create from a heart-centered place in the hopes of leaving the world with a different perspective about the way American life can function and exist to mutually benefit humans and nature.

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