Some years are meant to be survived. Others are meant to be understood only after they pass.
2025 was not loud. It did not demand proof. It did not ask me to become someone new by force. Instead, it arrived like a quiet alignment—where effort dissolved and intention finally caught up with action. Even in moments of uncertainty, I could feel it: every difficult season before this one was converging into something whole.
This year did not need explanation. It needed recognition.
Each morning, I woke up slightly altered. Not unrecognizable, just refined. The girl I have been, year after year, kept growing into a more powerful version of herself. Not through resistance. Not through struggle. But through inevitability.
There is something in me that keeps rising. I don’t know where it comes from, or how deep it runs. I only know that no amount of pain or sorrow has ever managed to keep me from standing back up. That force—quiet, relentless, unromantic—is my truest inheritance.
Maybe one day it will run out. Maybe that day will come when my work here is complete.
Until then, I don’t count life in years. I count it in selves.
How many versions of me are still waiting to live. How many lives remain folded inside this one.
Fortuitous Purpose was never about having answers. It was about trusting that meaning reveals itself through motion—through living honestly, choosing consciously, and letting truth surface when it’s ready.
This chapter closes not because the journey is over, but because I no longer need to explain why I walk forward.
Pain creates a shadow. That much is undeniable. And with it comes an instinct—raw, immediate, human.
The urge to hurt someone because you were hurt is natural. It’s an afterthought. A reflex. The nervous system fires before wisdom arrives. That first dark impulse—the flash of retaliation, the desire to strike back—is not a moral failure. It’s biology. We are human, after all.
But instinct is not instruction.
Someone who has truly understood shadow work knows this difference intimately. They know that while the impulse is real, acting on it is foolish. Short-sighted. It might feel satisfying in the moment—like relief, like justice—but it always backfires. Always.
Here’s the paradox most people miss: the shadow itself knows this.
The shadow is not reckless. It is intuitive. Its intelligence lies in discernment—in knowing which actions drain you instead of protect you. True shadow integration does not encourage explosion or revenge. It teaches restraint. It offers protection that is quiet, strategic, and enduring, not the kind that lashes outward for temporary relief, but the kind that preserves your integrity long after the moment has passed.
No foolish negative outward action here. No outward action at all.
That is real control. Real control of your mind, your psyche, yourself.
The Point of the Shadow Is Liberation
This is where healing becomes unmistakable.
You know you are not healed yet when you still feel the urge to use your shadow to attack something—to feel powerful, justified, or momentarily relieved of the pain you endured. That urge doesn’t mean you’re strong. It means you’re still inside the wound.
Healing reveals itself when that urge dissolves.
When hurting back no longer feels satisfying. When retaliation feels heavy instead of empowering. When you no longer need to prove what you survived.
That is not weakness. That is freedom.
When I did my shadow work, it wasn’t rebellious. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t performative. There were no declarations, no theatrics, no enemies to conquer.
I sat with my pain (a.k.a. my shadow).
For hours, days, weeks, months, years…
Crying. Shivering. My body trembling as if every cell was finally allowed to speak. I felt it fully—without distraction, without escape—asking God to help me endure it.
That was it.
No revenge. No outward action. No destruction of anyone else.
That is why I say shadow work is a divine practice. Not because it glorifies darkness, but because it demands surrender. It asks you to sit in the uncomfortable truth long enough for it to transform you. It has nothing to do with rebellion and everything to do with reverence—for your pain, your body, and your capacity to endure without becoming what harmed you.
The shadow, when honoured correctly, does not make you darker.
It makes you free.
And Here Is the Part No One Talks About
When you stop reacting, something shifts.
When you refuse to act out your shadow through harm, your growth becomes the force. Quiet. Unavoidable. Surgical.
The person who tried to bring you down doesn’t get your anger. They don’t get your retaliation. They don’t even get your attention.
They get something far more destabilising:
They get left behind.
Your healing hits where no attack ever could. Your alignment exposes what was never solid. Your becoming does the work you never needed to do outwardly.
That is the real power of shadow work!
Not destruction. Not revenge. Not proving anything.
Just transformation so complete that the darkness that once threatened to consume you becomes the very thing that carries you forward.
“And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.” – Claire Fraser, Outlander
I’ve thought a lot about this line lately. It’s one of those quotes that stays with you, not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s true.
Time heals, they say. And maybe it does. It softens the edges, dulls the sting, lets you breathe again. But memory, memory doesn’t forget. Memory lingers. It plays its little tricks, sometimes like a ghost that refuses to rest.
Time may close the wound, but the scar stays.
And perhaps that’s what Claire meant, that time, like God, is merciful. It gives us distance, perspective, grace. But memory, the Devil, keeps pulling us back. It whispers, remember how that felt? Sometimes with warmth, other times with ache. The scar becomes a reminder, not just of what happened, but of what we still carry inside.
So what is time really healing? The pain, I suppose. The sharpness of it. But the memory, the scar, it stays, as it should. It reminds us of the work that’s still left to do.
There’s a song by David Guetta called Memories that puts it rather beautifully:
“All the crazy shit I did tonight Those will be the best memories I just wanna let it go for the night That would be the best therapy for me.”
That lyric “I just wanna let it go” is the missing piece. Time alone doesn’t heal. Letting go does.
And yet, I’ve struggled with that part — the letting go. Holding on feels easier sometimes, doesn’t it? We get used to the pain; it becomes familiar, almost comforting in its predictability. But pain was never meant to be a home. Eventually, it catches up with you, demanding to be felt, to be acknowledged, to be released.
That’s the divine magic of time, it confronts you with the memories exactly when you’re ready to face them. You feel the ache so deeply that there’s no choice left but to let it move through you. That’s when release becomes inevitable. After all, we were never meant to hold on to the weight of our wounds.
Healing isn’t about forgetting or staying far enough so you don’t feel its presence anymore. It’s about revisiting the pain long enough to understand it, to really feel it, and then to let it move through you instead of dodging it. That’s how time becomes divine. Because if time passes and the pain remains locked away, untouched, then memory will keep dragging you back to the same moment, again and again.
Time only heals what you allow yourself to feel.
Maybe that’s what it means to turn time into therapy. To sit with what hurts, to let the tears fall, to stop resisting the ache until, slowly, it begins to dissolve.
Feel the pain. Let it go. Heal.
And one day, when memory comes knocking again, it won’t hurt as much. You’ll trace the scar gently and smile, not because you’ve forgotten, but because you’ve finally made peace with remembering. Because that’s what true healing is: forgiving and remembering. Forgiving the past, yourself, and the people who became part of your pain. Not to erase what happened, but to set yourself free. Forgiveness is what transforms the scar from a mark of suffering into a symbol of survival.
And on the other side of all that feeling, after the tears, the release, the remembering comes peace. Not the fleeting kind that depends on circumstances or closure, but the quiet, grounded peace that settles in once you stop trying to control what was never meant to be. It’s a peace that doesn’t need answers. A peace that trusts that what left was never yours to hold, and what remains is exactly what’s meant to stay.
That’s when the memories soften, the body exhales, and the soul finally rests.
“Maybe peace isn’t the absence of pain, but the grace to remember without bleeding.“ – Namrata Adsul
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