Rock Bottom Doesn’t Always Look Broken – The Conscious Choices That Led Me Back to Myself
- Brainz Magazine
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Written by Caren Carnegie, Founder of Transform Fitness Coaching | Intuitive Momentum Coach | Speaker & Writer
Caren Carnegie is a coach, psychic channeler, and the creator of Transform, a space where fitness, healing, and intuition meet. She helps people return to themselves by honouring the body and awakening the coach within.
Rock bottom is rarely the dramatic collapse we imagine. It isn’t always the loss of everything familiar or the visible unraveling of a life. Sometimes rock bottom looks like a woman who appears to “have it all,” the steady profession, the beautiful home, the family, while quietly losing connection to herself. That was my reality. And it wasn’t until someone at my recent Open House asked me a simple question, “Tell me about you… how did you get here?”, that I realized just how profoundly my life had changed. I stumbled over my words that day, not because I didn’t know the answer, but because the woman standing there at Transform HQ was not the same woman who answered that question many times before that day. My truth no longer fit inside the old story.
I didn’t get here through a neat plan or a polished strategy. I got here through a series of conscious choices, choices that asked me to rise, to let go, and to trust myself before I recognized who I was becoming. None of what you see now came first. I came first.
The first choice: To stop masking and start moving
In the life I lived before this one, the one that looked full and stable on the outside, I felt deeply disconnected. I didn’t feel at home in my own life, and certainly not in my own body. I wasn’t falling apart. I wasn’t failing. But I wasn’t fine. During that time, I was drinking heavily, not socially, but as a way to silence myself, to soften the discomfort, to avoid the truth my body kept trying to deliver. The first conscious choice I made wasn’t glamorous or dramatic. It was simple, honest, and brave, stop blaming my body and start moving with it. That decision cracked something open in me, something I didn’t have language for yet.
The second choice: To move through the mess
Before Transform HQ, there was a long, committed journey with a Personal Trainer who helped build the foundation I still carry today. She taught me discipline, form, strength, and structure, gifts that would one day support a completely different version of me. Her work mattered. Her presence mattered. Her encouragement mattered. And after the pandemic disrupted everything familiar, I found myself training in two worlds at once, with her, learning and being guided, and alone in my furnace room, showing up with whatever I had, however I was. It was a strange, liminal period, one of physical growth guided by her coaching, and one of inner unraveling guided by something deeper I didn’t yet understand.
During that time, something else began happening that caught me off guard. People in different areas of my life started noticing a shift. When you’re shedding old identities, the world can’t always tell whether you’re rising or unraveling. Sometimes people assume you’re withdrawing. Sometimes they worry you’re “not okay.” Sometimes your emergence looks like your disappearance. This was especially challenging in relationships that mattered to me, including the one with my Personal Trainer.
Near the end of our time together, she gently shared that she felt like I was “wearing a mask.” She sensed something was off, something she couldn’t quite name. But what she couldn’t have known, what no one knew, was this, I wasn’t putting on a mask. I was in the process of taking it off, quietly, privately, courageously. Behind the scenes, my inner world was shifting. My soul was whispering. My body was asking me to listen. And I didn’t yet have the words to explain it.
I kept showing up, with her and alone. I kept walking. I kept lifting. I kept unraveling who I wasn’t. I kept remembering who I was. The furnace room, the one I resented, wasn’t confining me. It was initiating me. And while numbing habits still had their grip, and while I was avoiding truths I wasn’t ready to face, I kept moving, how I was and where I was.
During my walks, the ideas and messages began arriving with a clarity I couldn’t ignore. They didn’t feel like thoughts. They felt like truth. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was channeling. I wrote everything down. I followed it. I trusted it. And in that following, I realized we are all so much more than we’ve been taught to believe.
The third choice: When my soul whispered, “It’s your time”
There came a moment, unmistakable, quiet, steady, when something inside me said, it’s your time. Time to rise. Time to stop numbing. Time to choose differently. Time to honour what had been calling me for years. So I did. I put the wine down for good. I kept walking. I kept lifting. And I kept listening, to my intuition, to my body, to the messages moving through me.
I became a Spiritual Life Coach to understand the version of me that was emerging. I became a Personal Trainer to honour what my body had been showing me long before my mind caught up. And then came the choice that changed everything. We moved. We left the neighbourhood, the predictability, and the version of life that looked “right,” and moved to the land where Transform HQ now stands, surrounded by trees, stillness, and truth. And honestly, it wasn’t far from where we were. It was easy. It was natural. It was meant to be. I didn’t fully understand why at the time. But my soul did.
Here is the deeper truth, I envisioned the space long before we ever lived here. I saw people moving on the land. I saw the trees holding them. I felt a place where strength, spirituality, and self-leadership met as one. But the most important realization is this, Transform didn’t begin when HQ was built. Transform began when I decided to. The space we created didn’t create me. HQ is the reflection of what I created within myself, not the other way around. The furnace room didn’t change. I did. And eventually, everything in my outer world shifted to reflect the woman I was becoming.
The ongoing choice: To live from embodiment
Everything people see today, the work, the space, the community, the message, was built from the inside out. I learned to turn the volume down on my mind. I learned to trust my body. I learned the value of presence. I learned to choose myself when it was inconvenient, misunderstood, or uncomfortable. Some relationships shifted. Some identities dissolved. Some chapters closed quietly, like a page turning without a sound. But each choice created space for the life I live now, a life aligned with who I truly am.
We are so much more
Here is what I know with absolute clarity, we discover our potential the moment we stop masking and start moving toward ourselves. Your journey won’t look like mine. It isn’t meant to. But it will begin with a conscious choice, a choice to stop abandoning yourself, a choice to follow the pull, a choice to trust what your body already knows.
Rock bottom isn’t always a collapse. Sometimes it’s the moment you can no longer pretend you’re fine. You are so much more than the version of you that’s holding on. It’s your time. And your life begins to change the moment you choose yourself.
Visit my website for more info!
Read more from Caren Carnegie
Caren Carnegie, Founder of Transform Fitness Coaching | Intuitive Momentum Coach | Speaker & Writer
Caren Carnegie is an Intuitive Momentum Coach, Certified Personal Trainer, and Speaker. She is the founder of Transform Fitness Coaching and creator of Transform HQ in Sebringville, Ontario, a holistic training space redefining strength for the New Human. Caren is an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine and an emerging voice in embodied leadership and soul-aligned well-being.
