Journey Back To My Soul
Part 1
The spring of 2021 was my first dark night of the soul.
Not the Instagram version where you post cryptic quotes about transformation while sipping matcha lattes. The real kind, where everything you thought you knew about yourself crumbles, and you're left standing in the wreckage wondering who the hell you actually are underneath all the performance.
If you're unfamiliar with that term, the dark night of the soul is a stage in personal development when a person endures a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception of life and their place in it. It's a spiritual soul transformation that leaves you changed forever. What they don't tell you in the spiritual wellness circles is that it feels like dying while you're still breathing.
It felt like everything and everyone around me was falling apart. An unshakable feeling warning me of what was to come. My body knew enough was enough—something had to change—but my mind was taking its sweet ass time to catch up. I had no idea then that the Universe was strategically placing lessons in my life that would wind up being my blessings. My life would change forever. Even more shockingly, I had no clue how much I would be willing to sacrifice and shed to unlock what was always meant to be mine.
I'm sharing this because if you've ever felt like you're living someone else's dream while your soul screams for something different, you're not alone. If you've ever felt like you're going crazy for wanting more than what "should" make you happy, you're not broken. You're awakening.
And awakening, my friend, is messy as hell.
The Prison I Built With My Own Hands
For much of my life, I held onto childhood trauma like a security blanket. It was there to offer excuses when things didn't go my way and there to keep me trapped in the prison of my own thoughts. I became a professional at putting everyone else's needs before my own, mistaking self-sacrifice for virtue.
There was an inner voice yearning for more, but I buried those whispers under the weight of what I thought I "should" want. Sometimes we deny ourselves the gifts we know we have for fears that don't even belong to us. We carry other people's expectations like designer handbags—expensive, heavy, and ultimately not our style.
The first step in any self-healing journey is the hardest because it requires admitting that the life you've been living might not actually be yours.
When Adele Became My Therapist
My awakening began seven years earlier, in the fall of 2015, when I listened to my soul and made the decision to end my first marriage. It went against every behavior I knew culturally and against what everyone else wanted for me.
If I tell you who I can credit for this breakthrough, you'll chuckle. It was Adele's album 25—specifically "Love In The Dark." I was sitting on my living room floor, and those lyrics hit like someone had peered into my heart, gathered the data, then taken the express train to my brain to move it to the next station.
That station was called: For the first time in your damn life, woman, do what your heart yearns for.
That song didn't change my life—it revealed the life I was already meant to be living.
That moment began my quest to understand why my heart and brain were constantly at war. The quest led me through a summer of expression, a divorce, and surveying the world around me with fresh eyes and greater self-awareness. In order to have the freedom I craved, I had to blow up certain parts of my life. Growing up in chaotic environments, blowing things up didn't scare me. Staying stuck did.
Sometimes you have to lose your mind to discover your mindset.
The Art of Strategic Destruction
If dismantling my personal life wasn't enough, sitting next to a busted radiator in my NYC apartment, I realized I wanted more for my career too. Keeping with the trend of going completely left, I made an entirely new career switch in a field where I had little experience.
Storytelling has powers beyond captivating an audience—it got me a job at highly competitive tech company. During this transition, I discovered the beauty of deep connection with yourself and happiness that wasn't dependent on someone else's validation. That confidence fueled me to speak up in other areas that didn't feel right.
I asked for a promotion within six months, not just because I felt like it, but because I knew I'd sold myself short in my desperation for the new job. I got the promotion and became the first Latina at that level in that division.
The feeling of getting what I actually wanted by advocating for myself provided sensations I wasn't familiar with. My brain was shocked—all it took was using my voice? Something I'd had all along but chose to ignore because my rational mind would shush me.
I became fascinated with the mind-heart connection and why they're often at odds. Using skills I'd picked up managing product and engineering teams, I decided to reverse engineer my trauma, inner conflict, and hurt. If I was going to tackle some, I might as well tackle them all.
This self-exploration would lead me to meet people and environments that would give me plenty of material to work with.
When the Universe Said "Sit Down"
Fast forward to 2020, when it all began spiraling beyond my control.
What good is a computer full of data without source code to decipher it? Add a worldwide pandemic and a savior complex—wanting to rescue others from their hurt—and you have the formula for world-class burnout, mental exhaustion, and friction in every aspect of life.
I was so focused on helping everyone else that it saved me from having to decode the data of my own life. The Universe knew I was doing the most. She knew I had the capability and awareness to find the path back to myself, but after seven years of life experiments, I'd taken too many detours.
So the Universe, wise as she is, brought me the lessons I needed and forced me to confront various truths about myself and the world around me. She also forced me to realize that trying to resolve all my inner struggles while presenting a completely different version of myself to the world was code I could never decipher.
The Unraveling
In true form, the only way I knew how to get out was to blow it all up again. While living in Nashville, I made the decision to seek guidance through a medium uncommon in Latino families: therapy.
To say that was the beginning of the unraveling is an understatement.
I wasn't sure what I'd be walking into, but I knew the ultimate experiment in understanding the mind-heart connection was to decipher myself. To begin reverse engineering yourself, you start by unraveling and unpacking things you didn't even realize you were storing. These very feelings and thoughts hold many people hostage.
This spiritual self-healing journey was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I didn't realize how easily I'd be triggered. I also didn't realize how deeply I'd hurt myself by not allowing myself to shine the way I encouraged others to shine.
After unpacking comes organizing. What do you do with all you've uncovered, unlocked, unearthed?
“It takes courage to go against what everyone has planned for you. Don’t settle for living a life that belongs to someone else’s dream.”
When the Student Becomes Ready
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. The teacher can come in any form—a friend, partner, spirituality, life coach, therapist, environment, even just a feeling. In my case, it was all of the above.
Many people choose to ignore gut feelings and soul whispers for fear of disrupting their routines. They continue despite the conflict between mind and heart. I was at a point where whispers became shouts and my hard drive was at capacity.
I chose the power of choice and embarked on a self-healing journey that changed everything and brought me into alignment with my soul. I won't say my "true self" because this journey taught me that your authentic self evolves—it's fluid, not something that can be coded like a program.
When I stepped into my first therapy session, everything changed instantly. The Universe began placing situations that would take me places I never intended to visit. Those intense sessions led to a medically approved mental health leave and departure from the seemingly "perfect" life I'd created.
I shed many layers in Nashville and almost ended my second marriage. Leaving everything behind, I prioritized myself. Together with my husband and two boys, we took a long drive west to the desert. My heart knew change was underway; my brain was slowly beginning to understand and had no choice but to surrender to the Universe's flow.
Choosing to heal myself was merely the first phase in a domino effect that would take months to unravel and inevitably turn my life right side up.
The Journey Continues
Wherever you are in your soul journey, don't ignore the whispers. You owe it to yourself to live the life your heart yearns for. It takes courage to prioritize yourself and surrender to your soul's calling.
This is just the beginning. What happened in that desert? How did choosing myself reshape not just my personal life, but everything I thought I knew about success, business, and what it means to build something meaningful?
That's Part 2.
For now, know this: Your soul's whispers are breadcrumbs leading you home to yourself. The question isn't whether you're brave enough to follow them.
The question is whether you're brave enough to keep ignoring them.
Thank you for reading Part 1.
Con amor,
Vanessa
Jan 4, 2022
