In 2010, I had reached a point in life where I simply knew something big needed to change in my life. Apart from the fact that I was frustrated with the way my love life was going (not well), I was generally unhappy with life. And one day I woke up and it was like I could physically feel it, right in my chest. I had been seeing a therapist at the time who was very into the spiritual side of wellness, which I was open to. Somehow we got on the topic of chakras and how my feelings of malaise seemed tied to my solar plexus chakra, the energy centre associated with feelings of self esteem and self worth. After exploring some YouTube videos and trying some DIY healing through sound therapy, I started exploring Reiki, and found a practitioner who provided healing sessions including guidance in what was becoming an increasingly spiritual journey for me.

Early on when I started going to Reiki, my practitioner, Sheri, told me she believed one day I’d write about my healing journey. And what a journey it has been.

At the time, I think I really believed that I would do this healing and my talk therapy for a few more months maybe, get myself all fixed up, check the proverbial box certifying that I was officially fixed and healed, and then collect my shiny new relationship, which would come free as part of the package. LOL.

What I have come to realize is that when you ask the universe for healing, the universe does not f**k around. In my view, depending on what you’re meant to heal in this lifetime, it’s like an endless onion (including the tears), unravelling one painstaking layer at time. And every time you think you’ve gotten to the core of the onion, a new layer is discovered.

In my blissful ignorance at the beginning of this journey, I believed the universe would simply bless me with rewards and affirmation for doing my inner work. I eventually started a new job which was an exciting opportunity for me that brought lots of new people and experiences into my life. I started to have dreams that seemed to carry very meaningful messages.

And one day, I found myself having a conversation with a guy and feeling a spark that sent me reeling. I remember sitting in mild shock and thinking, “um, what the f**k was that all about?!” I felt giddy and I didn’t know why.

Over the next few weeks and months, we started a courtship that was like nothing I had ever experienced. I felt so sure of our connection – it was effortless, easy, kind, nurturing, friendly, intense and passionate. He was caring, attentive and funny, and he was so open about his feelings. He repeatedly told me how happy I made him. I felt I could be totally myself with him, and I was honest with him about my fears about the relationship, which he handled with maturity, reassuring me that what he felt for me was on a whole other level. Soon he had my trust, and I felt totally secure in the relationship.

What I also found remarkable was that I saw him clearly – no filter. He had really great things about him and he had a dark side too. I fully accepted him and wanted him as he was. I felt on some level that we seemed to be brought together for a reason and that he was an important part of my healing and perhaps vice versa. I believed that ultimately, we would make each other better. But one day, inexplicably, his behaviour started shifting. This guy, who previously had had all the time in the world for me, suddenly had other people to see and things to do, and he gradually shut me out in every way.

When I started to sense him pulling away, I immediately started spinning. I confronted him about what was going on. He basically told me he had commitment issues and that the whole pulling away thing was a pattern for him when things got too intense. I thought it was something that could be resolved by reassuring him of my feelings, just like he had done for me at the beginning. But the relationship fell apart and the breakup was made worse by the fact that he would not respect my boundaries as I tried to move on. He hadn’t wanted the relationship, but he didn’t want to let me go either.

Since he (inexplicably) was the one who no longer wanted the relationship that he had aggressively pursued and accelerated, I thought he’d want to leave me alone so he could move on and find whatever magical, better thing he believed was waiting out there for him. But ultimately, at his insistence, we spent months hashing it out and talking it over. It was always about ‘why’ the relationship had ended, which never came with any real answers. He really just seemed to want to keep me on the hook and also try to control my feelings about him.

What became painfully clear to me over that time was that a part of him enjoyed watching me suffer. And paradoxically, he also wanted to convince me he was a good guy so I could absolve him and he could move forward guilt free. Maintaining my boundaries with him was tough because he would literally corner me, and also because I was so vulnerable. I felt so gutted that it was like I was walking around with a gaping wound. And this jackass kept showing up to feed on it. What I realize now is that I’m not even sure he was fully aware of how twisted his behaviour was. I believe that on some level he knew what he was doing, but he was equally trying to convince himself that he was not that bad, and he needed me to help him do that.

Ultimately, I put a hard stop to everything by instructing him not only to leave me alone but to literally walk in the opposite direction if he ever saw me again. It worked. I slowly started to heal and get back to normal. And then one day, out of the blue, a friend tells me that she had recently run into him and his new girlfriend. She apparently thought it was important that I should know that this girlfriend was a really pretty blonde who was nothing like me. In spite of myself, I confronted him. And when I did, the look of smug satisfaction on his face said it all. The last communication I ever had with him was over email and text, telling him (God knows why) that I saw him for what he was, and not what he was pretending to be. He said I had ‘forfeited my rights’ to know anything further about him when I had told him to leave me alone. I said ‘enjoy your life.’

It took me a tad longer to stop checking up on him. Over the next little while I found out who the girlfriend was and saw they were flaunting their new relationship on social media. I eventually decided to tune out completely and I blocked them from my social media so I could pick up the pieces and move on. Despite those efforts, it seemed as if the universe was taunting me – I’d run into him in unlikely places, even once in a different town. Meanwhile, I felt like I was floating in a rudderless ship with my sense of self hanging by a thread.

All of my life experiences continued to test me in the years that followed. What I felt I really could have used at that time, was a new relationship that would blow that one out of the water. I thought to myself, “I’m doing my ‘work’ and he’s not doing his, so why am I being punished while he is being rewarded?” I felt so unattractive, so unwanted, so powerless. It seemed so goddamn f*cking unfair that he just got to Copy/Paste a new relationship into his life and feed his illusion of being great, while I was wading through the muck in every way.

My daily life had become a hostile environment, like a social clique where everything was about looks and fitting in. Everything that was happening around me was a constant test to my self image, self esteem and self confidence. I REALLY could have used that old feeling he once gave me of feeling so beautiful and wanted and powerful. But it was all stripped away – first by him and then by the people around me. Everything that I experienced was basically the opposite of validation, and I had to decide if I was going to let it eviscerate my sense of self or somehow find it within me to give myself what I couldn’t get anywhere else.

This was an ugly, relentless and harrowing time for me. Yet through the pain, I think I knew somewhere deep down that these challenges were all part of what I had asked for when I decided I wanted to heal. Although, I hadn’t realized what a winding and dark path it would be at times. I kept hoping that some reprieve would come, but I kept being hammered by the intensity of the emotions. There were times where I felt I could barely walk or stand. There was a desperate part of me inside that just wanted to get on my knees and beg this guy to tell me what I had done to deserve his rejection. I was so ashamed of whatever it was that made me so difficult to be with. Among the many things he had said when we broke up, one explanation he had given was, “I just want things to be easy.” Why wasn’t I easy? Was I difficult to love? I couldn’t seem to figure out if I was too much, or not enough. I basically just wanted to be the “right amount,” whatever that was. But no matter what angle I looked at it from, I could not crack the code of where things went wrong.

It may seem as though I put an awful lot of weight on the opinion of one person. But the fact is that the relationship and what it did to me was a trigger. It totally broke me so I had to build myself back up and face every dark corner of my existence to bring it into the light to be healed. The fallout from that breakup was where the rubber really hit the road for me, and things got more gritty and real than ever. There was many a dark time when I truly felt I could not go on any longer. It ultimately became clear that the only way out was through, and so I continued to put one foot in front of the other, stubbornly persisting every step of the way.

To self soothe the best way I knew how, I became preoccupied with self help. I read many books, explored many healing modalities and had many experiences in the years that followed, all of which transformed me and my approach to life. I am better, wiser, stronger, and my perspectives in life have shifted and evolved. I’ve learned that this work never ends, and I truly believe I am meant to share my experience with others. It was all the resources from books to blogs to pithy social media quotes that always showed up on my feed at the right time, which became my lifeline over these years. And now I believe it’s time for me to add my story and voice – to share what worked for me, to help those of you on your own journey to see that you are not alone, and to find the strength and determination to keep moving forward, no matter what life throws at you.

Right after I decided it was time to tell my story, I came across this post on Elephant Journal: A Letter to the Man Who Almost Broke Me. It took my breath away how accurate and spot on it was with the experience I’ve just shared. It reaffirmed that I’m not the only person who went through that, and that there are many of us committed to our growth and transformation, even when it hurts like a motherf*cker and we have to do it alone. It also made me wonder how many women are out there doing this work, who were triggered by a man’s treatment of them?

I know and believe there are very good men out there who have answered the call to be better when a partner holds up a mirror and an invitation to mutual growth and healing, or through some other triggering event in their lives. That had been my deepest wish for that relationship, and I was just shattered when it didn’t work that way for me. I believe that for those of us who are drawn into doing this really challenging, heavy, soul work, is because it’s work we know on some level we have been called to do. I think the people who choose not to, often do so because they currently have a better option, an easier out and welcome distraction. (God knows I would have liked to feel like I had a better option!) Perhaps they have a new, less demanding partner waiting in the wings, a harem of enablers who reflect back to them the version of themselves they’re most agreeable to, or any number of activities that help numb and deaden their senses to real life. No matter what it is, those are their decisions, with which they will eventually have to come to terms.

No one gets to hide from life forever. It finds you and it deals with you, one way or another. But one thing is for sure – don’t wait around to see what happens to the next person. Focus on you, and do right by yourself. If you feel compelled to take this journey, whether you’ve hit your rock bottom or just feel ready to grow, I believe you are wise not to put it off, and I believe you can do it.

For those of us who identify as women who have decided to pursue their inner work, I believe it has become urgent and necessary to us. As a good friend once said to me, “it’s not a good time to be a woman.” That was several years ago, and things have certainly shifted significantly even in the past four or five years – the MeToo movement, the Trump presidency in the U.S. precipitating an increasing focus on calling out patriarchy, toxic masculinity, climate crisis, racial equality and diversity. But we’re on a journey here, and – hopefully – we’re just one stop along the arc of history that will eventually right the wrongs of the past and allow humans to evolve to a better standard, guided by their higher selves and not their basest, fear-driven instincts.

The depths of my feelings and sorrow and pain tell me that the amount of shit I have faced spans more than just one lifetime, and it’s probably not even all my own shit. It is not just about my immediate problems and whatever personal dramas of the moment have triggered that pain. Whether you believe in past lives or not, there is no denying that the trauma we experience daily – big and small – is ancient, and goes back many generations. Whether it was literally us in another lifetime and body, or through the ancestors who gave us their DNA, family baggage, or the cause-and-effect of the chain of events of history, we are connected to the past. Our lives are touched one way or another by every traumatic thing a living being has endured at the hands of another. We are reckoning with those things.

And I believe we will eventually heal them, by healing ourselves – for us, for those who came before us, and for those who will come after us.