It started with anger. Not the fleeting kind, but the slow-burning fire that rises from years of being misunderstood. From people looking at my life from the outside and thinking, She’s so lucky. They see the travel, the “success,” the help I receive (which I’m not always open to receive), and assume it’s all effortless. Sometimes they accuse me, silently or outright, of asking for too much, of playing needy to avoid hard work.
To those people, I’ve often thought: Take it. Take the money, the attention, the so-called “privilege.” But take the rest too. Take the premature birth, the uncle who molested me as a child — not once, but multiple times. The strange man in my home who crossed a boundary when I was twelve. The father who beat me, the mother who couldn’t care for me. The ten-year relationship with a narcissist. Take the way emotional and physical trauma numbed my body so completely that, at 33, I am just now teaching it how to function properly for the first time.
During a session with my personal trainer, I activated my core and balanced myself in a way I never had before. It hurt, a deep, almost alien ache, as muscles long dormant came online. Pain radiated from my pinky toes up my legs. Every workout drags me back to the memory of what shut my body down in the first place. People see the privilege of affording a trainer; they don’t see the ghosts I fight in every rep.
The physical pain is just one part. The aftershocks of my past ripple through every system in my body — PCOS, ADHD, mild autism, gut issues, body dysmorphia, social anxiety, addiction, and more. I’ve stayed quiet about much of it because I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want to be treated like I’m fragile. Just treat me like a human being.
And yet, some people have used these wounds against me — knowingly. Those people no longer exist in my world. I’ve finally reached the point where I can feel anger without drowning in shame for it. The little versions of me didn’t have the space to stand up for themselves. I do now.
I could choose to live in the narrative that life has been unfair, and some days, I still go there. But more and more, I choose to look at what all of this has given me.
It’s given me a deep love for movement — dancing, skiing, hiking, crossfit, kickboxing, yoga. It’s given me friendships that became lifelines. It’s given me opportunities: AIESEC in college, working in Egypt, studying English in London, working with children and leaders shaping education policy in Australia, landing in the tech industry in Canada. It’s given me the resilience to navigate cultures and continents, to build a global circle of friends who would open their homes to me in a heartbeat.
The narcissistic relationship? It taught me financial independence, self-reliance, and skills I never would have learned if I’d followed the script handed to women in my culture. ADHD, autism, and anxiety? They led me to music — a constant, grounding presence. Health issues? They taught me more about nutrition and the body than I could have imagined.
Gratitude doesn’t erase the pain, but it reframes it.
I now find myself craving genuine connection. The kind where people take time to understand me instead of jumping to conclusions. Where they can sit with me through the layers, listen without judgement. My mind likes to peel everything apart, to overprepare, to make sure no detail is missed. But maybe, just maybe, I don’t always need to pull every thread.
I’m reminded how beautiful life is in its chaos. Years can feel wasted, aimless, only to reveal themselves later as part of a bigger pattern. Like that poster I once saw: You think you’re wasting your life… but then comes the turning point, and you realise you knew what you were doing all along. I started my inner work journey 5 years ago. It’s been difficult dealing with the monsters in my head, but I’d go back in time and do it again if it leads me to where I am right now.
By the end of the week, something had shifted. I finally understood non-duality — not just as a concept, but as a way of being. Triggers still come. I still feel fear, anger, grief. But now I can let them be what they are, without clinging or pushing them away. It’s not nothing, it’s just what it is.
I’ve lived most of my life in duality — stuck in the past, anxious about the future, rarely present. Now, I know how to stand here.
Here, in this moment.
Here, with both the heaviness and the gratitude.
Here, as I continue to heal and unfold.
fortuitouspurpose 