When the Dominoes Fall Taking You Power Back in a Season of Chaos
Karen Bulinski Mathison is a grief coach, death doula, and CEO of The Naked Grief, blending deep expertise with lived experience to help others transform pain into meaning. Her work is raw, relatable, and rooted in real-life healing.
Seven weeks of collapse, diagnosis, and disruption can make it feel like life is nothing but falling dominoes you never agreed to line up. This is a raw reflection on what it means to stay standing when everything breaks at once, and how to reclaim power in the middle of chaos.
Seven weeks. That is all it took for the universe to decide it wanted to play a game of high stakes bowling with my life. Seven weeks of one thing after another. Seven weeks of dominoes falling faster than I could pick them up.
You know the feeling. You think you have your feet under you. You think you have finally mastered the "new normal." Then, the first block tips.
It hits the next. The next before you can catch your breath, you are standing in the middle of a debris field wondering where your power went.
I’m Karen Bulinski Mathison. I’m a grief educator. I’m a coach. I’m a professional who helps people navigate the darkest corners of their souls. For the last seven weeks, I’ve been right there in the dark with you. No sugarcoating. No rainbows. No "everything happens for a reason" bullshit. Just the raw reality of chaos.
The marketing tour that wasn't
On March 7th, I was heading to Vegas. I was prepared. I had the brochures. I had the care cards. I had a list of ten funeral homes from Delaware to Maryland and all the way to Nevada. This was the moment for The Naked Grief to step up. I was ready to offer real aftercare support to communities that desperately need it.
I got to the airport. I checked the cards. I scanned the QR codes. Nothing. The links were dead. The code was broken. My website, the digital heart of my business, was flatlining.
The business plan didn't just stumble. It broke. Imagine standing in front of a potential partner with a handful of useless paper. That was domino number one. It was loud. It was embarrassing. It was just the beginning.
The body betrayal
I came home from Vegas, and the universe decided the tech failure wasn't enough. An alarm in my body sent me to several doctor visits. That was the wake up call. Not subtle. Not optional. My body was trying to tell me something was off, and that I needed a wellness check.
Because it had been so long since I dated, I initially gaslit myself. I told myself maybe I was just looking for reasons to run. Maybe it was "fear of moving on." Maybe it was just dating jitters. It wasn't. What I was actually doing was ignoring the signs. Ignoring the emotional misalignment. Ignoring the settling.
I was forcing myself to stay in a connection where I had no real feelings left. I was questioning why I didn't want to share my life with him, and why I allowed someone in who disappeared during every rough patch, silent when things were breaking down at home, yet front row center when I launched my book. I was settling, and my body knew it before I did.
Then came the doctor's office. It started with what looked like a minor annoyance on my face. Something easy to dismiss. Something easy to delay. Then came more appointments. Cysts. Tumors. The kind of findings that hijack your brain and your sleep. Some of them were benign. But the original "annoyance" turned out to be the actual cancer culprit.
Suddenly, I wasn't just fighting a broken website. I was fighting my own cells. Four surgeries. Multiple spots removed. Waiting would have been detrimental to my livelihood. My body was being carved up while my heart was mending from a poor choice in relationships and the wise decision to leave.
This is the domino effect of trauma. It doesn't wait for you to finish one crisis before it hands you another. It piles on. It waits until you are at your weakest and then it pushes.
The trigger season: When memory hits like a freight train
If that wasn't enough, we are now entering what I call the Trigger Season. From April to July, my calendar is a minefield of "domino dates." These are the anniversaries, the birthdays, the milestones of my late husband. These dates don't care about my cancer surgeries. They don't care that my website links have been breaking for six weeks straight.
They show up anyway. They are the heavy dominoes. The ones that have been standing there since he passed, waiting for the right moment to topple. When you are already exhausted from a season of chaos, these dates feel impossible. They feel like the final blow. But they don't have to be.
The pseudo rockstar philosophy: Expensive shoes and thrift store clothes
Some people think I’m weird. I accept that. I’m the woman who will wear a $10 thrift store outfit, but I’ll be rocking expensive John Fluevog shoes. Why? Because those shoes are my foundation. They are funky. They are loud. They are architectural works of art that make me feel like a rockstar even when I’m falling apart inside.
In business and in grief, you have to invest in the things that carry you. When my website broke, I didn't just patch it. I upgraded. I looked for stronger tools. I looked for better support. I realized that if I’m going to walk through this fire, I need the right pair of boots to do it.
Being "relentless" isn't about pretending you aren't hurting. It’s about deciding that even if you’re dressing down, even if you’re in your pajamas and haven't showered in three days, you are going to put on the best shoes you have.
You invest in the tools that work. You stop settling for what drains you, whether that’s people, bad habits, or broken tech. You stop trying to save the things that are designed to hurt you.
Taking your power back
Acknowledge the carnage. I was behind on doctor appointments. My code failed. I got a cancer diagnosis. I had work to do. I took control of the appointments and moved through them quickly. Four surgeries in six weeks.
Dump the dead weight. If it doesn't serve your healing, it doesn't get a seat at your table.
Upgrade your toolkit. Don't settle for "good enough" when your life is on the line.
Be relentless.
Relentless is a hard word. It’s a staccato word, "re-lent-less" It means you keep moving when the dominoes fall. You don't try to stop them from falling, sometimes they just have to hit the ground. You focus on what stays standing. You focus on the power you have right now, in this second, to choose your next step.
The naked grief reality
I am facing these upcoming trigger dates with something I didn't have seven weeks ago. Better tools. I have a website that works. I have a team that listens. I’m being transparent about this journey because I’m done being lonely. I realized I was lonelier in that relationship than I ever was alone. I don’t want a polished, curated life. I want a community that loves the real version of me because they relate to the wreckage. That connection is more important than any surface level relationship. I’m trading the "mask" for a community that doesn't use platitudes.
If you are in the middle of your own spiral, I need you to hear this. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to feel disoriented. The "brain fog" of cumulative grief is real. It is thick. It is exhausting.
But you are also allowed to be powerful. You can be a "pseudo rockstar" in your own life. You can decide that the cancer, the breakups, and the broken plans are just the "outfit", the temporary stuff on the outside. But your foundation? That is yours.
What is your next step?
The dominoes might still be falling for you. That’s okay. Let them fall. Your job isn't to be a superhero. Your job is to be relentless.
If you need a place where you can be raw, where you don't have to sugarcoat your pain, and where you can find the tools to actually heal, come find us.
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Stop pretending you’re "fine" and start getting real.
We don't do unicorns here. We do healing. Real healing. It’s time to take your power back. Put on your best shoes. Let’s get to work.
Read more from Karen Bulinski Mathison
Karen Bulinski Mathison, CEO, Grief Coach & Death Doula
Karen Bulinski Mathison is the founder and CEO of The Naked Grief, LLC, and a grief coach, death doula, and content creator based in Camden, DE. With a master's in mental health and wellness and advanced certifications in grief, coaching, and art therapy, she brings both professional insight and personal understanding to her work. Having navigated multiple profound losses herself, Karen's approach is honest, compassionate, and refreshingly real. She's the creator of the Grief Garden children's stories and is dedicated to transforming pain into purpose. Through her writing, programs, and heartfelt advocacy, Karen empowers others to find hope and healing after loss.
