Welcome to Beyond Stability, where psychiatrist, researcher and humanitarian adviser Dr. Suzan Song shares reflections about how we think, decide, and partner during uncertain times to find a sense of groundedness and joy.
There’s something I’ve noticed across twenty years of clinical work and in humanitarian settings on three continents: the people carrying the heaviest things are often the ones you would never know it from.
You are still in the meeting. Still the person others lean on. Still making good decisions for people who depend on you. But underneath that is a loss you haven't had time to sit with. A rupture that came uninvited and had to be quietly set aside because life didn't stop—or you didn’t allow it to stop.
A person I worked with some years ago had built, by any honest measure, exactly the life she'd intended: financial security she'd earned herself, influence that extended further than she knew, a marriage that had been a genuine partnership, work that mattered to her.
But when a major rupture came, publicly, in ways she hadn't controlled, she was surprised to find that the usual resources didn't fit. The people closest to her needed her to be further along than she was. Therapy helped, the way a good conversation helps: temporarily. She had access to everything but felt alone.
What made it harder was something she hadn't anticipated. She had spent decades being effective: Solving hard problems. Holding a great deal for lots of people. That capacity—which had served her extraordinarily well—was now a liability.
Oftentimes, the version of yourself that knows how to make things work keeps trying to work the problem. And the trying, after a while, becomes its own form of avoidance.
Most people assume that insight comes first. Once you understand what happened and why, recovery follows.
Yet research tells a different story. What actually consistently comes before healing, is motion: small, imperfect action taken before you feel ready. We have the sequence backwards.
What I have seen, in practice and in the literature, is that rupture has a recognizable shape regardless of its cause. The narrative that organized your sense of what comes next and told you who you are may break. The rituals that once marked time quietly disappear. Purpose, which had always felt structural, goes silent.
So the internal question of who am I now, and does my life still mean what I need it to mean, doesn't get asked out loud, because life is still running and asking it feels like either a luxury or a crisis, and neither is acceptable.
On May 13th I'm going live to talk about exactly this — what loss looks like when you're still showing up, and what the evidence actually says helps. Informal, with time for questions.
If something has broken quietly this year, I'd be glad to have you there.
→ Register here— it's free “Loss, Identity and the Pressure to Keep Going”
Notes & Invitations
Why We Suffer and How We Heal (Penguin, 2026) draws on two decades of clinical care and humanitarian fieldwork to examine how people find grounding after rupture.
If it resonated, a review here makes a real difference. Sending it to someone who’s having a hard year is also a good way to let them know they matter to you.
Free Guide to building your own Three Friends of Winter Circles here
Longer reflections, press, and events at www.suzansong.com
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