The Year My Lungs Stopped Letting Life In

Heartbreak, allergies, and the grief trapped inside my lungs that no one could see.

If this story stirred something in you and you'd like to sprinkle a little support my way, you can always buy me a coffee.
Every sip helps me keep writing from the heart. 💗🍵

The First Breath That Wouldn’t Land

I sat on the floor of a stranger’s guest room in New Orleans, clutching my chest.

The cough wouldn’t stop.

It felt like something foreign had lodged itself behind my sternum. I kept trying to cough it loose, but it stayed...tickling. Every inhale hit a rattle somewhere just below my ribs, scraping like sandpaper. My lungs rejected the air outright, stiff and hollow and tight. My chest felt like a locked door.

I didn’t know that I was allergic to cats. All I knew was that the scratch in my lungs felt very much like the ache I’d been carrying in my heart for the last several months.

It was Grandpa’s birthday. The first one since he’d passed.

Is this what grief feels like when you shove it down too far and never let it out?

I hadn’t taken the time to properly grieve. How could I? He’d died suddenly, heart-attack, while I was studying abroad. I missed the funeral. Now, eight months later, I was on track to finish a triple major bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in 4.5 years. Student-teaching, working two part-time jobs, and taking two night-school classes…my plate was FULL.

Every Wheeze Had a Backstory

This spring break road trip hitting Pensacola, Gulfport, Biloxi, and New Orleans, was supposed to be a much needed vacation from the heaviness that had become my life. But rather than breathing in the relaxation of the salt air, I spent the whole trip coughing and wheezing.

In Pensacola, we stayed with the girls’ volleyball team at a beachside hotel. One of them had offered a bed. My boyfriend accepted. Little did I know that both nights we’d stayed there, I went to bed early, while he made out with her on the beach.

As much as I knew the end of our 3-years together was looming with graduation, I refused to believe he’d cheat on me, like he did with all the girlfriends who came before me. I curled in bed with the scratchy hotel pillowcase and the distant sound of waves pressing against the shore. I closed my eyes. Tried to feel peace. Tried to feel anything. He returned after midnight. Climbed into bed without explanation. Wrapped his arms around me like nothing had happened.

The next day, we arrived in New Orleans and stepped into a house with cats, and the wheezing began. A dry tickle at the base of my throat. A cough that wouldn't clear. Air fought to enter, and each breath landed shallow.

I didn’t know it yet, but that was the first time my lungs tried to communicate heartbreak.

The second time my lungs called out grief was a few weeks later. A friend and I took a day-trip. Fifteen minutes into the drive, she told me about her grandfather and how sweet his cat was. Her grandfather was still alive. Still vibrant. My eyes filled as my lungs closed.

We pulled over. I gasped for air.
Turns out, he sweatshirt had cat on it, from two days earlier.

A few weeks after that, a kitten wandered into our dorm building. A student had sneaked it in. I didn’t see the cat. Never touched it. It stayed on the first floor. I lived on the third. Curled in the fetal position on my bed, sobbing because I had lost a student to suicide that day, I started coughing. This time it was so bad I went to the ER and had a full nebulizer treatment, and got prescribed steroids and inhalers, and referred to an allergist.

The allergist told me I had the most severe cat allergy he’d ever seen in three decades of practice. I saw the fear he had for me in his eyes as he told me I could never ever be close to a cat again.

A Body That Learned to Keep Its Distance

I adapted.

I started asking every person I met if they had cats. Friends. Classmates. Colleagues. I learned to scan for danger in invisible places. I seated my students with cats at the far side of the classroom. I opened windows even in winter. I taught with the door open.

I smiled and waved and kept a wide berth. I practiced friendliness from a safe distance. And over time, I stopped letting people close. Not just physically. Emotionally too.

It became easier to keep everyone at an arm’s length than to explain what could or couldn’t happen. I didn’t hug much anymore. I didn’t accept last-minute invitations. I stopped going home with friends, stopped sitting on couches I couldn’t verify. I became careful. Controlled. Distant.

I protected my lungs…And in doing so, I stopped receiving love.

When I graduated and took my first teaching job, I carried this caution into the classroom. I had made it. I’d finished my master’s, earned my credentials, landed a position in a school that respected me.

I should have felt joy. But my lungs didn’t open. That year, I lost four more students. Two to suicide, one to drug overdose, and one to drunk driving.

My boyfriend had disappeared, ghosted without a final word, with someone else now. One of the volleyball girls, I think. My circle had vanished. My family didn’t know how to support me. My friends were scattered across the country starting new lives. Happy. Vibrant.

While doctors diagnosed me with chronic bronchitis and severe allergies and psychologists diagnosed me with clinical depression and generalized anxiety, I knew there was something deeper to my condition than their symptom-based pathologies. something that couldn’t be touched with medications, procedures, or cognitive behavior therapy.

It was grief.

I grieved my students—their empty chairs, their unfinished essays, their stories I couldn’t rescue.

I grieved the silence where my grandfather’s voice used to be. I’d finished my degrees, but he never got to see them.

I grieved the version of love I thought I had. The arms that held me in bed like nothing had changed, when everything already had. I grieved the dignity I lost when he cheated and ghosted.

I grieved the kind of grown-up-after-college life I imagined I’d earn if I did everything right.

And I carried that grief quietly, behind polite conversations about pollen and air quality, behind the wheeze in my chest I couldn’t explain to anyone who hadn’t felt it too.

Next Week on The MindfulSense Mentor🧚

Next week, I’ll introduce you to a woman who isn’t one woman at all. She’s a composite of the hundreds of clients I’ve sat with—each one told they were depressed or anxious when their lungs were simply carrying too much unprocessed grief. In her story, you’ll see how the breath holds memory, how the body speaks when words fall short, and how healing begins not with a diagnosis, but with deeper listening. We’ll walk through her case together, and I’ll show you how the body holds grief, not as a malfunction, but as a message.

P.S. I have since undergone a deep energetic based alternative treatment protocol that brought my allergy reactions to normal levels that respond well to an over-the-counter anti-histamine medication without producing any side effects.

In other words, I can now be around cats without experiencing any negative effects. This treatment protocol as well as all my own healing rituals and practices will be detailed in the third article of this month, available to paid subscribers.

Your Body Has Its Own Language

If you’ve been told you’re depressed or anxious, but the treatment protocols don’t sit right in your body or feel off in your soul—your body might be asking to be heard on an energetic level. I’ve spent years helping sensitive souls decode the wisdom in their symptoms, especially when no one else seems to understand. If your breath has been tight, if your heart feels heavy, if you’re carrying more than your lungs can hold—I’d be honored to sit with you. You can book an initial session here. 🌬️🫁💗