BOUNCING IN

Unsinkable Author: Alexandra Howard

I was born into movement.

My childhood was shaped by hotel lobbies, foreign languages, and cultures colliding under one roof.

A life where connection was currency, and everyone had a story.

I was the daughter of a hotelier.

From Istanbul to the Caribbean, Europe to Canada - I lived in the hotels my father ran.

Every few years, we’d pack up and start again - new country, new city, new hotel, new version of life.

It was a beautiful way to grow up.

I learned how to belong everywhere. To adapt. To connect.

My father used to take me on Saturday morning walkabouts through the hotel when I was young.

We’d walk through every department - the kitchen, the front office, housekeeping - and we’d shake hands with all the staff.

My father moved with a certain intention…

He’d look you straight in the eye and start with, “How’s your family?” then he’d ask “How’s business?” and he’d always end with, “Great job.”

I didn’t speak much. But I saw everything — the smiles, the softening, the way people came alive when they felt seen.

That’s what I gleaned on those walkabouts:

How to track energy.

How to tune myself to others.

How to make people feel comfortable - even if I wasn’t.

This became my normal.

That’s the thing about being a kid - we don’t always know what we’re absorbing until years later.

What I see now is this: I was learning how to belong to the world.

But I didn’t yet know how to belong to myself.

And for a while, this worked great.

I stayed attuned, composed. I was easy to be around.

The one who always knew how to be and what to say.

Until one day… it didn’t.

Because overnight — without warning or explanation — my family fell apart.

One day we were whole.

The next, my father was gone.

My mother was with someone new. No one told me why.

Suddenly, all that knowing — how to connect, how to adapt, how to be the “good one” — meant nothing.

I didn’t understand what was happening.

I didn’t know how to hold the grief of what I had lost.

So…I did what so many of us do when we don’t know what to do with pain:

I disappeared.

I started throwing up three times a day.

I started smoking.

I obsessed over exercise.

I became the rescuer in every room.

I lied a lot to cover the cracks.

And no one noticed - because I masked my pain behind baggy clothes, big achievements, and beautiful distractions.

Athletic trophies. Globe-trotting. Helping others in crisis bigger than my own.

I made the breakdown look impressive.

On the outside, I was functioning. Still achieving, smiling, pleasing.

But inside, I was spent.

Gripping for control - food, body, relationships, emotions…

Anything to hold the chaos inside of me together.

Anything to avoid the heartbreak of losing what I loved most.

This worked…until one morning, many decades later… it didn’t.

My body gave up.

I was living in Oakville. My two boys were at school. The house was quiet.

I was in bed, staring at the wall, completely unable to move.

The scariest part?

For the first time, I questioned if I mattered.

If I was of any use to anyone in this hollowed state. Even to my own children.

That terrified me…enough to act.

I got up, walked to the kitchen, and threw out my last pack of cigarettes.

Then I picked up my phone and Googled: Zen Buddhist near me.

Called the first number.

A man’s voice with a thick French accent answered: “Alo? Ziz eez Arnaud.”

And I said three things to him I’d never said out loud before:

I’m not okay.

The way I’m living is not okay.

And I need help.

Two hours later, I was sitting cross-legged in a tight pair of jeans on the floor of Arnaud’s basement, with six perfect strangers.

My first meditation. 90 minutes long.

And for the first time ever - I stopped moving.

I met myself.

And I hated every second of it.

“Alex, you’re full of shit.”

“Alex, you’re ruining everything!”

“Alex, what’s wrong with you?”

“Alex, who do you think you are?”

“Alex, stop being dramatic & get over it!”

My body and mind were on fire.

The voices in my head were ruthless. My throat locked tight. I could barely pull in air. My heart pounded. Every nerve felt electric, raw.

That moment cracked me wide open.

It was the beginning of what I now call bouncing in. Not bouncing back. Not pushing through.

But bouncing in - into my breath, my body, my truth. Into everything I had abandoned to stay chosen and loved.

Meditation led to mindfulness.

Mindfulness led to mindsight.

And together, they taught me something I’d never learned - not in all my years of moving and adapting:

How to stay.

Stay with discomfort.

Stay with grief.

Stay with the unspoken things I’d buried.

I started witnessing the invisible parts of me I had disowned - the parts

that ached and shamed. The parts that longed.

The parts that were exhausted from holding it all together.

And what I realized was :

Unhealed pain doesn’t just sit quietly in the background.

It runs your life.

It sucks your energy.

It strains your relationships.

It shuts down your voice and your choices.

It whispers lies like: Keep going. Don’t feel that. Stay small. Be good.

But the moment I stopped moving — really stopped — and started listening…

I began to return.

Not into the world. But into myself. Into my aliveness where pain no longer ran the show.

Choice did.

That choosing is now the heartbeat of my life’s work. It’s what I live.

What I practice. What I teach. It’s what I hold space for.

Because I know I’m not the only one who smiled and disappeared while aching.

Who looked like they were thriving… but couldn’t feel a thing.

Aliveness isn’t a vibe.

It’s not a mood or fleeting high.

It’s that steady, rooted place inside you that’s always there, and has always been there.

It’s the space where you stop bouncing back and start bouncing in.

Into what moves you at your core.

Into what steadies and grounds you. What ignites you. What calls you forward.

And maybe… that’s what I was really learning all those years ago — on those Saturday morning walkabouts with Dad.

I thought I was just watching people smile when they felt seen. But now I know: I was learning what aliveness looks like.

Because here’s what I’ve learned:

I was born into movement. But the most powerful movement I’ve ever made… was inward.

Not into a new country - but into a new relationship with myself.

And when I finally came home?

I didn’t just heal.

I came alive.

And when you come alive

— you live differently.

You lead differently.

You love differently.

You move like it matters.

Because it does.