“You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” ~Ayn Rand

The first person who introduced me to personal development was my ex. He once said, “It’s like you’re already doing some of these things.”

What a compliment, right? Being a high-level person on the path of constant evolution, self-revolution, always changing and growing. Who wouldn’t want to be that?

Beyond the compliments, I also felt a kinship with many personal growth concepts because they reminded me of some aspects of psychology and philosophy. If I could watch Seligman’s TED talk about positive psychology, why couldn’t I listen to a Tony Robbins lecture? It didn’t seem like a huge gap.

The books filled my thoughts with wisdom and magic. The audios filled my grocery store trips and bus journeys with fiery motivation. In so many personal development gurus, I felt I had real friends who truly understood me.

Self-help, and my ex for that matter, caught me at a sensitive time in my life. I had recently hit rock bottom and decided to change my life. I quit drugs, clubs, and smoking. I stopped pathologically lying and hurting myself for attention.

I wanted to be alert and lucid. I wanted to explore and reach my potential.

One thing that empowered me about personal development was getting rid of the victim mentality and shedding my traumatic stories. I didn’t have to carry the past around the way I did. What was the point? It just made me miserable and regretful and vengeful, never leading to anything productive.

At first, the idea of taking responsibility for my destiny felt like a tough pill to swallow. I was supposed to take responsibility for the abuse I’d endured in various family and romantic relationships? But when I examined the situations closer, I could see that I had a side in co-creating those dynamics. I wasn’t simply a victim of what people were doing to me. I was constantly triggering their actions and reacting to them. I was part of a cycle.

What was at first difficult evolved over time into a new approach to life. All I had to do was find a way to hold myself responsible for my emotions, for my life, for my behaviors. No matter how other people acted, I always had a choice.

I carried this empowerment with me day to day; it helped in many ways. It helped me quit a day job I disliked. It helped me take charge of my career. It helped me let go of being annoyed and held back by the toxic actions of grouchy cashiers and judgmental family members. But taking responsibility for my part in everything started harming my life long before I recognized what was happening.

I carried my victimless self-empowerment to the street corner where my ex drunkenly yelled at me in public, calling me all kinds of names, as I escorted him into a cab. I carried it to his house where he threw coat hooks at my face and cussed at me before passing out in the bed. I carried it the night I woke up to him vomiting all over the bed after another blackout-drunk night. I carried it through the years I lent him thousands of dollars to gamble away on affiliate marketing while paying my bills and our bills, cooking, cleaning, and providing him with unlimited emotional support, day in and day out.

Back then, I had a blog. I wrote about finding self-love through obstacles in my work, reaching self-understanding in difficult encounters with yoga teachers and friends, learning from negative reviews, and so on. I didn’t blog about my ex’s alcoholism or verbal abuse. It felt like I was being respectful. If I was going through a hard time—which is how he framed it every time I told him I wanted out—I’d want the same thing.

He kept me addicted to promises of a future where he’d get better. Sunk-cost bias is a real thing. He would cite Elon Musk’s first wife and how she was there for all the awful things and never got to enjoy his success. He wouldn’t want that to happen to me: to see him at his worst, support him through it, and then not get to enjoy his best. At the time, these justifications made perfect sense.

Personal development taught me to lose myself in the service of others. It felt right to give to him as unconditionally as possible. Most of the time, I honestly felt like a good person. When he was spewing insults in my face as I remained nonreactive, I felt like I was holding space. That’s what holding space is, right?

The trouble is that when someone yells and screams while drunk, they’re not safe, no matter what kind of space you create for them. By the next morning, all progress is lost. This is something I could see happening, but I denied it. I learned to find tiny shreds of growth and hold onto those as proof that I should stay.

Taking responsibility for my part wasn’t the only thing keeping me there. It was also the stories about how I’d drawn this situation upon myself.

Sometimes, I’d bring up that he was a completely different person when I first met him: patient, kind, loving, and curious about exploring my personality, my body, my views. He’d claim the way he was at the beginning was unsustainable. How could I have expected anything else?

When we met, I was in the middle of healing sexual assault trauma. When he and I would get close to being intimate, I would sometimes freeze up and turn away. He once said this rejection was difficult for him and unsustainable.

The first time we had sex felt like a violation. The moment I realized what happened, I felt like running away, but I didn’t. After all, I’d had a few drinks and wasn’t on my guard. Besides, I already had triggers about this kind of thing. How could I blame him without also blaming myself?

The first time he yelled at me, I sat in front of my mirror, crying, looked myself in the eyes, and said, “If he did it once, he’ll do it again. You know that. Run. Go. Now.” But I didn’t. After all, I’d hurt people I cared about when I was at my worst. I changed. How could I deny him the opportunity to do the same?

I filled up private journals with angry words. Then, I burned them. I thought: Isn’t this what any evolved person would do? Holding onto past traumas and breeding rageful narratives seemed like unhelpful patterns. I reframed my bypassing as patience and kindness and, worst of all, unconditional love.

Anger, it turned out too many years later, was a useful signal I kept ignoring. This felt strange to discover. How could I have missed it? After all, personal development is crawling with ideas about decoding your emotions, honoring yourself, and respecting boundaries. For a few years after I got the courage to leave, I kept asking myself: How could I have been so intent on practicing self-awareness while ignoring the most blatant issues in my life?

Ah, but I hadn’t been ignoring them. I was experiencing excruciating chronic pain symptoms and explaining them away with physical causes. Too long after leaving my ex, I began to understand how these unaddressed issues had begun as dissociative symptoms in response to violation. I also realized how much worse these symptoms became from living for seven years with a person whose presence felt like a violation. How could I have stayed in that environment daily while also daily practicing (and, embarrassingly, also teaching people about) the art of self-love?

It took me years of soul-searching and decluttering and truth-speaking and running around in circles trying to heal the physical and emotional symptoms of feeling chronically unsafe to even begin to understand the answer. It’s simple: There’s a lot of wisdom out there, and there are many contradictory wise messages. We hear what we want to hear.

I do believe that personal development can be used to truly improve a life, to help people reach their highest potential. I have also experienced first-hand how we can use it to keep ourselves in toxic situations. It’s not like self-help is to blame for me staying with him, but it didn’t help me escape either. It’s not information that helps us at the end of the day. It’s courage. It’s honesty. It’s community.

Unfortunately, community is something I didn’t have when I began realizing all these things. I thought I did. I thought I had many friends who were deeply into self-healing and self-love and emotional authenticity. But when I started to get real about the things that were affecting me, like sexual assault and repressed rage and the war back home and my indigenous roots and the predators inside the “conscious community,” I felt more and more alone. After years of supposedly inspired living, I had no real friends to turn to when things got rough.

With all the advice columns and how-to articles and 10-step lists, somehow personal development had left out the most important part: humanity. Learning to be ourselves alone and with each other.

Again, it’s one of those things that we only see when we want to see them. As Lao Tzu said, “The greatest wisdom seems childish.”

I read so many books and listened to so many audiobooks searching for answers about how to become the best version of myself, but the opportunities, the lessons, and most importantly, the answers had been there in front of my face all along. I just had to be brave enough and honest enough with myself to see what was already there.

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“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” ~John Lennon.

For as long as I can remember, I have been living in a never-ending to-do list. I was constantly thinking about what needed to get done, how I could multitask, or how I could be even more productive. Even on the weekends, I loved planning out my entire day, usually focusing on chores and other not-so-exciting things.

To be honest, I thought this was a perfectly normal way of operating. I would pride myself on my productivity and my ability to stay on top of everything. Never mind the fact that I was always tired and stressed out—at least things were getting done! Well, that’s what I told myself, anyway.

Being in that mode every day just became a habit. I would think of what my next meal was while eating the current one. I would plan out my Saturday and fill it with errands and chores before even getting to the end of the week. To me, that felt like an enjoyable weekend because I could stay in my planning comfort zone and not have to stray from my habits.

When I was in this “planning mode,” it was very hard to snap me out of it. It’s like I am wired that way, and doing anything different would feel uncomfortable. Even while my body was screaming for rest, I persisted. I never even questioned why I was like this until I met my husband.

He caught on very quickly to my planning ways and one day asked, “Do you ever plan fun into your day?” That question took me aback because my first reaction was: Of course I plan fun! This is fun! And then he asked me the same question about planning rest as well, to which I had no answer.

My husband was the first one to make me question my ways and take a hard look in the mirror. While I loved feeling accomplished, my body was having a hard time keeping up. At that point, I fully realized that the to-do lists never stopped, and if I didn’t slow down to enjoy my life, it would be over before I knew it. Memories buried under errands and chores.

Once I had awareness of my habits, I wanted to investigate why I was this way. Why was my brain constantly planning? Why was I always trying to multitask and rush through things? Why did I never allow myself to take breaks and rest? What was I running from?

I never took the time to ask myself these questions, and maybe you can relate to this. It seems that most humans have a “busy” problem. Too busy to see friends, too busy to exercise, too busy to vacation, and the list goes on. But what is underneath all this busyness?

Well, to change my ways, I knew I needed a full reset. I had to get to the deeper meaning of why I operated this way. I didn’t want life to keep passing me by as I checked items off to-do lists and felt productive. I wanted to truly savor the small moments because right now is all that exists.

To make these changes, I used my favorite self-reflection tool, journaling! Writing out my thoughts and just letting the words out of me always allows me to go deep within myself. It’s what allows me to discover the things that I am trying to avoid.

When I asked myself why I preferred to be distracted and busy, I realized that it wasn’t to feel more productive . It was because I didn’t want to face some very hard truths. Truths such as:

• Time is passing by, and it seems to go faster the older I get.
• My loved ones are growing older and one day won’t be here.
• Memories that were once crystal clear in my mind are now barely visible.
• I am reaching an age that I once thought was so far in the future. I am here now.
• I still don’t fully know what I want out of life, yet I am not getting younger.
• I am entering a new chapter in my life (new job, new home), and everything feels chaotic.
• I constantly struggle to find the balance between adventure and stability.

 When I looked back and saw these words on the page, I was speechless. All my deepest fears and worries were right there in front of me. These were realities I was running from because, truthfully, they are not easy to accept. All my efforts to distract myself were a way for me to freeze the moment and time forever. To stay this age forever so that the people around me didn’t age either.

And that’s the beauty and pain of being alive. None of this is forever, yet the time we do have is nothing short of a miracle. So, while facing the truth is painful, not running from it is the best superpower you can possess. Because once you don’t fear anything, life will truly feel like magic.

In the same journaling process I asked myself what beauty I could find in these truths that I was running from. How could I reframe them to support me and make me feel even more alive while I still get this one chance on Earth? Here’s what I discovered:

• My loved ones are healthy and happy in this moment, and that’s all that matters.
• Age does not mean anything. I honor how my soul feels.
• The past and future do not exist, only this moment.
• Some memories are fading, but that makes room for new ones.
• Change is exciting and pushes me to evolve into a better version of myself.
• I can have adventure and There are no rules for how I need to live.
• Life is a miracle I get to experience daily; no moment is wasted.

Just by doing this one reframing exercise, everything changed for me. I saw that there was nothing to run from. That being busy was doing more harm than good. And if I only concerned myself with daily tasks, I’d miss the beauty of the moment I was in.

I love the life I’ve created and the people in it. The only thing that matters to me is my relationships, with myself and others. People are what make life special. So instead of always planning, I can sometimes leave the tasks for another time, because I’ll never get this moment back.

I also learned that rest is an active practice on its own. Taking a day to do nothing is a practice. Sitting down for an hour to give your body a break is crucial. Incorporating more time for presence, reflection, and inner connection is the best gift I can give myself.

Instead of making new lists and finding tasks to do, I now allow myself to get lost in a new book. Instead of cleaning the kitchen right now, I can go on a long walk with my dogs, who bring me so much joy. Errands can be put on hold right now; I’d rather sit and talk to someone I love.

This year, I am giving myself the permission to rest and be an active participant in my life. To make new memories and look forward to new adventures. Nothing is more important than experiencing life in all its glory.

If you can relate to what I shared, I promise you that when you slow down, it’s not at all scary. You just might uncover some beautiful lessons that can change your life.

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“If your path demands you to walk through hell, walk as though you own the place.” ~Unknown

Trigger warning: This content contains references to self-harm and suicide.

It was in the spring semester during graduate school. I was living alone in a one-bedroom apartment and working nearly full-time hours at night.

The anti-depressants weren’t working so well. I was keeping up with my therapist, but I suppose it was too much.

I felt too much. It hurt so much and couldn’t handle it. You could list out the symptoms of depression, and I had them all.

Unable to deal with the stress of college, broken relationships, or other life events, any added stressor seemed unbearable. I cried a lot, had terrible neck pain, and even failed one of my classes.

I’d hurt myself more with wild hope that the physical pain would outweigh the emotional. It was a low point at the bottom of the pendulum swing.

When I began to feel like eternal sleep was the only peace in sight, I turned myself in by telling my therapist exactly what I was planning to do. They wasted no time and had me in safe hands quickly.

That was the second time I went to the mental hospital within a year. I stayed in my room mostly and cried a lot, but the staff were kind and helpful.

My psychiatrist was concerned about the underlying cause. He eventually landed on clinical depression and general anxiety disorder. After a three-day stay and medication adjustment, I was released.

Over the next while, I did well enough. Eventually finishing my graduate degree had a positive effect on my chronic migraines.

I’d had multiple treatments to ease the headaches. Once a migraine attack lasted for two weeks. When they suddenly eased, my doctor basically shrugged and attributed them to stress.

About a year later, I had a new therapist and psychiatrist. Finally, I was diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression, general anxiety disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

It explained why I had been through so many medication adjustments, the bouts of insomnia, and the frequent mood swings. I believe that simply having some answers helped.

My medication was adjusted again, and I began to feel much better. There was no more self-harming, and I grew my support group. I am with the same therapist and on the same medication several years later.

During all of this, I changed jobs twice, lost a mentor to COVID, and moved to a new house. There were also things going on in my family that were out of my control.

What was obvious was that I was able to cope with life events much better than before. I learned to adopt a lot of tools to help combat old habits.

For example, instead of freaking out over a situation, I could take a moment and meditate if able. I was able to considerably lower my stress and anxiety this way.

Instead of isolating after a rejection, I could seek out a close friend to talk to or go out with. To help me stop thinking negative thoughts about myself, I’d write positive things on sticky notes and place them around the house. Like:

“You have a good work ethic.”

“You are a loyal friend.”

“You have a beautiful smile.”

Yes, they felt like lies after listening to self-hatred for so long, but perseverance made the difference.

At some point, I had a moment. A realization.

Sometimes we go through things and feel like we don’t have the strength to make it through.

“This is how I go out,” was often a phrase I’ve uttered to myself in defeat. It’s easy to focus on the negative and let ourselves be overwhelmed. That’s why reflection is so important.

The beauty of it is that if we can push through, the current struggle will shrink behind us like a bend in the road.

Everything we endure serves to make us stronger and much more fit to face the next challenge.

Currently, I’m experiencing some things that would have crushed the old me. Obstacles I’ve never faced before. People have repeatedly asked if I am all right.

“I will be,” is a favorite response of mine. It signifies faith and the belief that things are not static. Things always change.

Sure, I get sad sometimes, but giving up is out of the question. I’m constantly reminded of the saying:

“I didn’t come this far to only come this far.” ~Matthew Reilly

Hope is a beacon I keep burning in my soul. I feed it daily, and it illuminates an otherwise deep darkness.

I had to go through all of that to be strong enough for right now. All of this—the waiting, the sleepless nights, the hard work—it’s all going to be another bend in the road. A story to share. It’s muscle to climb the next hill.

I guess you could say I’m owning this struggle. Walking through ‘hell’ like I own the place.

When new stressors and worries come up, I put them in the pile of things I can’t do anything about. If so-called obligations arise, I am at liberty to decline for my peace of mind.

When good news comes around, it’s a glimmer of light. Daylight piercing through the other end of my dark tunnel.

It combines with the light of hope inside and urges me onward and upward. I’m expectantly moving toward it and looking for the next stage in my journey.

As a final thought, those tough experiences made it possible for me to help and encourage people today.

There were times that I thought no good could possibly come from the pain. Looking back though, I feel only gratitude. I’m grateful for myself for persevering, for the professionals that helped me, and for my support people that listened.

If you are facing something difficult, own it in the knowledge that you will get through it. One day you will look back on it and smile.

Live it.

Feel it.

Own it.

Overcome it.

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“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us.” ~Steven Pressfield

I was born a decade too late in 1975 in a small Pennsylvania town. By the time I was old enough to buy a record, the legendary rock and roll culture of the 1960s and 70s was a distant memory. To some, it might have even seemed uncool by then. But to me, a teen in the late 80s, the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll was everything.

I spent hours writing song lyrics in my flowered journal, watching MTV, and poring over Circus and Rolling Stonemagazines, trying to catch glimpses of the personal lives of my favorite rock stars. I strummed my guitar and pretended I was Janis Joplin. I was a dreamer, obsessed with poetry and music and the romantic notion of traveling across the country to see my favorite bands.

At twelve years old, I took a bus from my small town to Philadelphia to see the band Heart. At fourteen, my parents drove me hours away to see Stevie Nicks. Then, in my late teens, I drove all the way to Ohio and Las Vegas, Nevada to see her again. No distance ever seemed too far to travel for my favorite music.

Back then, I envisioned myself following bands and living a carefree, hippie lifestyle where my only concern was getting to my favorite artist’s next show. And most of all, I dreamed about a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.

But somehow, by my early twenties, that dream felt out of reach. I met a man, got married, and had a daughter. Our life was filled with routines that were so different from the vagabond life I’d envisioned for myself. I traded spontaneity for discipline and gave up my dreams of traveling for the security of a stable life and a house in a good neighborhood.

Eventually, the responsibilities of marriage, career, and never-ending to-do lists made my dream of going to Red Rocks feel more and more like only that—a dream.

And it went on like that for seventeen years. Then, after years of doing what I thought I was supposed to do, my husband and I decided to separate.

I embarked on life as a single mom. And as I did, I reflected on the last two decades. We’d married young and, in retrospect, I realized we probably weren’t a good match. He was a real estate attorney with a strong personality and even stronger opinions. I gave our marriage the best of me that I could, but it felt like I was always being who he wanted me to be.

I had lost myself. I’d lost sight of my own hopes and ambitions. I’d never even made it to Red Rocks.

In 2016, newly single, I felt eager to date again, so I downloaded Bumble and set up a profile. Not long after, I matched with Jerry. He lived on the West Coast but was in my hometown of Philadelphia for a Dead and Co. concert—the same one I had tickets to.

Jerry had told me he’d followed the band as a teenager, but he hadn’t stopped going to concerts like I had. He’d held onto his dream and seen them at least 500 times. It was almost like he’d lived the life I’d imagined for myself way back when. We seemed to be kindred spirits. But I had a type, and that was someone who was within a fifteen-mile radius, so I decided not to meet up with Jerry at the concert, despite being intrigued.

Jerry and I kept in touch over the next four years, although I never held out any hope for anything more. He was a divorced man with children, on a dating app; I assumed he’d meet somebody close to home, and I’d eventually stop hearing from him. But to my surprise, he reached out periodically, often to talk about what was happening in the world of Grateful Dead concerts. It seemed he wanted to stay on my radar. He was always polite and respectful, never creepy or pushy.

Jerry was ten years older than me, but somehow reminded me of my younger self. He had a refreshingly youthful spirit, which was completely different than any man I ever dated. Like me, he had a corporate job, but he didn’t let that stop him from following his band across the country. Music was a huge part of his life, like mine.

We kept in touch, and by the summer of 2021, the pandemic restrictions had started to loosen. Outdoor events resumed. I’d been itching to go to an outdoor concert, and that’s when Jerry told me he had an extra ticket for Dead and Co. Honestly, when I accepted the ticket, it wasn’t to finally meet Jerry in person. I was just tired of being stuck at home.

I didn’t have any expectations. But the first time I saw Jerry smile in person, I had this feeling my life was about to get a lot more adventurous. And I realized I liked him. He was intelligent, polite, and handsome, and he loved all the same music that I had loved for years.

After that first concert, Jerry told me he was falling for me and that he wanted to see me again on his travels with the band. When I reminded him that I was a single mom with a full-time job and couldn’t follow a band, he offered to take me to Red Rocks for my birthday.

I couldn’t say no. Jerry was handing me my childhood dream on a silver platter, and I wanted to eat until I was full.

He pursued me relentlessly, and it was exhilarating and romantic. Nothing like that had happened in my adult life before him. We spoke daily, and our adventures over the next two years were amazing.

But about two years into our relationship, I began to realize that Jerry and I might not be forever. We led such different lives. His was wild and interesting; mine was more predictable. And as much as I loved his spontaneity, I began to see how chaotic his personal life was. I started to wonder: Was I in love with Jerry, or was I in love with the way he had stayed connected to his childhood dreams as an adult?

After two years of seeing each other periodically and talking daily, the facade started to fade. The rose-colored glasses were off, and I was seeing things more clearly. While professionally successful, Jerry jumped from job to job. He lived in constant drama with his family, and all his traveling took a toll on his health and his relationships. I also started to wonder if there were other women like me in his life.

I never doubted that Jerry cared deeply for me, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he had women like me in several states. I never asked him. I wanted to stay in my bliss, living out my childhood dream of music and love—to stay in the bubble of contentment and happiness with what we had, with one exception.

I wanted to see more of him. And, ultimately, I wanted to know that I was important to him.

Jerry couldn’t do that. He had a hard time committing to anybody or anything other than the band. I understood. It was that lifestyle that drew me to him in the first place, but I couldn’t continue a relationship like that.

The last time I saw Jerry, as I was dropping him off at the airport to fly home, I started to cry uncontrollably. I realized that the free-spiritedness of dating Jerry had a dark side: uncertainty. Every time he left, I never knew if or when I would see him again. Like the bands I had loved to follow, everything was on his terms. He decided when, where, and how, while I just showed up. It was incredible, but I wanted—needed—more.

When I told Jerry that I wanted more commitment, I thought for sure that he would choose me. It’s what I would have done. But he didn’t. And it broke my heart. At least for a while.

Once my relationship with Jerry ended, I had time to reflect. I realized that in our pragmatic world it’s all too easy to exist on autopilot. Still, we shouldn’t abandon our childhood dreams because they connect us to our inner truth and reveal the magic that surrounds us—and not only in iconic destinations like Red Rocks or in grand gestures like love-bombing and being swept off my feet.

Magic also exists in the beauty of a cotton candy sunset while driving home after a long day at work. It exists in the time I spend with the people I love, like my ninety-year-old mother, whose short-term memory no longer exists, but when we sit hand-in-hand and play Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” we smile and sing every word and feel joyful in the moment, even if we’re off-key.

Magic surrounds me when my ex-husband, who I consider a friend now, and I watch our magnificent eighteen-year-old daughter live her life, and beam with pride at the amazing young woman she’s become.

Most days, though, I find that when I listen to music, attend concerts, and spend time writing, those are the moments I know who I am, and my childhood dreams come to life.

And, of course, falling in love with Jerry taught me a valuable lesson:

Relationships don’t have to be long-lasting to be impactful. Sometimes, a short-lived experience, like those concerts I chased all my life, could contain years-worth of depth, love, and meaning.

And, I learned, dating doesn’t have to lead to a ring. Sometimes it leads to living a childhood dream and falling in love under a clear Colorado sky.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

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“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart … Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens.” ~Carl Jung

There is nothing quite like an unwanted breakup to rip your heart open and bring you face to face with your deepest shadows.

At least, that’s how it was for me.

Nearly six years ago, on a typically warm and sunny Saturday October afternoon in Los Angeles, I was lying on the floor of my apartment, wallowing to my then-boyfriend on the phone about how everything in my life seemed to just be hitting walls: My career was hitting a ceiling, our relationship felt stagnant, the direction of my life itself was hazy and vague.

It wasn’t the first time we’d had a conversation like this, but this time was different. On this day, for reasons I can only ascribe to the greatest mysteries of life, the center bearing the weight of it all began to unravel at the seams—with a long, deep sigh after at least an hour of getting nowhere, he spoke, “I think we should break up.”

My mind couldn’t have fathomed hearing these words. Our relationship, no matter how bad it was, did not have an end in my mind. We were connected, we had found something within one another—something special and unique—and he had rekindled a feeling of aliveness in me that I did not want to let go of. It was simply unthinkable to me that what I had found with him would ever come to an end.

But—as will eventually happen to us all at one point in life or another, whether it be a breakup, loss of a loved one, or something else—the unthinkable happened.

I wish I could say that part of me found relief in the moment; that the part of me that knew things weren’t totally right came to surface to tell me, yes, this is a good thing.

Instead, I entered complete denial.

I listened to his words, and after grappling my way through the remainder of that conversation, I hung up, went to bed, and cried myself to sleep.

In my head, because I was still so enraptured by a fantasy of “this can’t possibly ever end,” this was just a hurdle. It was a part of our path that would see us separating for a moment, but ultimately coming back together again.

My mind simply didn’t want to let go.

In fact, it couldn’t, because that is what happens when the unthinkable occurs. A mind attached to a specific outcome cannot comprehend any other outcome, as anything other than what it has imagined feels like a threat to your survival.

That relationship, no matter how many red flags persisted throughout our two and a half years together—never having said “I love you” to one another, always feeling like I was just trying to prove myself, consistently being told “can’t you just be more of this or less of that,” to name just a few—was a matter of survival for me. Without it, my mind thought I would literally die.

In retrospect, I can clearly see I was a woman attached.

The relationship had been a lifeline for me when we first met. Fresh on the heels of losing my dad, that man came into my life and made me feel something when life had all but lost feeling. Without him, I thought I would lose it all (the irony being, of course, that a relationship born in attachment will lose it all anyway).

Our relationship had been built on a shaky foundation of codependency and fleeting physical chemistry, and having never experienced a truly healthy relationship before, I couldn’t make sense of how a connection that had once felt so alive couldn’t be somehow fixed or saved. Breaking up was simply not a scenario that existed in my worldview.

Beyond the Unthinkable

I would like to say that you do not, in fact, die when the unthinkable happens. But the truth is, you kind of do.

That is, at least a part of you does.

Perhaps more accurately stated, a version of who you’ve known yourself to be up until that point starts to wither and asks to be let go.

It’s the part of you that thinks you need to stay in a relationship that isn’t empowering you, or the part of you that thinks you need to stay in a dead-end job that’s out of alignment with your heart’s desires, or it may even be the part of you that thinks you cannot say no to friends who ultimately don’t bring out your best.

Whatever scenario is most relevant to your current situation, the attachment to staying somewhere that is not empowering for your heart and soul is ultimately a reflection of how you once learned things needed to be in order for you to survive.

It is no coincidence or surprise, then, that when the thing you are attached to is ripped away, what’s left is a gaping hole into the depth of your shadow. If you’ve never faced your shadow before, it can feel terrifying to do so. That is why, as was my experience, we often find ourselves in a state of denial about what has happened.

Denial allows us to hang on to what was instead of facing what is. And what is, is this—a doorway into your very own path of soul initiation; a moment in which you are given a choice to either stay how you’ve been or face what has been swept into darkness so that you can begin to be free.

The Threshold of a Soul Encounter

For me, that doorway came one week later when I woke up the following Saturday morning and found myself facing a hard truth I had not yet seen or known: On my own for the first time, I actually had no idea what to do with myself or how to spend my time.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. There, standing in the bathroom that morning and staring at myself in the mirror, I reached the threshold of all great soul encounters: I realized I simply could not keep living this way any longer.

I could no longer bear the weight; the center had officially broken.

Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed my journal, sat on my couch, and began to write about the experience of the breakup and all the thoughts and feelings I had encountered over the past week.

And that’s when it happened.

It came like a flash of lightning. As I was recounting a scene from a few days prior when I’d run into my newly ex-boyfriend and felt my mood drop from feeling somewhat okay to feeling excruciating pain and despair, I noticed that my response to seeing him was to retreat inward. I realized in that moment something that I had never been able to see before: When you retreat, you can’t feel the pain anymore.

The sensation of retreating to ultimately being withdrawn was something I’d felt many times in my life before, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized the withdrawal was a form of self-protection: In order to stop feeling any pain that a part of me thought I wouldn’t be able to survive, I simply removed myself from it.

As I continued to journal, I began to see how for much of my adult life, I had made choices to avoid feeling pain. Like staying in a relationship that wasn’t good for my heart for far too long, I often opted for the perceived safety of what was familiar instead of being true to myself by making choices that honored my heart.

When I really got to the bottom of it, I realized that the pain I had experienced that I had so diligently been avoiding over the years stemmed from believing that there was something outside of myself that could deem me worthy of love and acceptance.

I had long been living as a woman terrified of being rejected and unloved to the point where I might literally die, and it showed.

Ultimately, it was in those pages that I began connecting the dots of my life and how I’d come to be someone who stayed in a relationship out of fear rather than real love.

Perhaps more directly put, I was meeting my shadow.

The Encounter is Just the Beginning

The insights I gained that day did not, unfortunately, make everything in my life immediately fall into place and feel better again. What they did do, however, was jump start my journey into real healing and inner growth on a level I had never been able to access before. That day, on my living room sofa, standing in front of life’s metaphorical wide open plain, I was given the gift of meeting my soul.

The path hasn’t been easy, but facing your shadows and getting acquainted with your soul isn’t meant to be. It is meant to shake you to your core, to make you face the parts of yourself you’ve been too afraid to look at and learn to befriend them so that you can uncover the strength, wisdom, and heart you didn’t even know you had.

Following the call of my soul to honor my heart took time, patience, gentleness, support, curiosity, and a whole lot of practice and faith to see myself through the darkness, but the rewards have been sweet: No longer automatically shutting down at the first sign of pain, I now know that the love I had been so afraid of not getting was within me the whole time, just waiting to be known.

It’s been just over six years since the breakup, and I can say with the utmost confidence, it’s been worth every word journaled, every tear shed, and every painful moment encountered on the way down and back.

In the end, you may not willingly choose the hard things that happen in your life (I certainly would not have chosen to be broken up with at the time), but when you find the fabric of your reality starting to rip at the seams, and you are standing on the precipice of the very depths of your soul, you are being given one of life’s greatest gifts: to meet yourself as you are and, ultimately, to know yourself as you came here to be.

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