I used to think healing meant getting better.

Stronger. Clearer. More capable. I thought it meant finally doing all the things I was supposed to do: the routines, the boundaries, the green juice, the therapy, the forgiveness.

I thought if I just followed the right map—someone’s map—I’d arrive.

But the longer I lived, the more maps I collected, and the more lost I became. Each system told me where to go. But none of them started where I was.

And that’s the thing about maps—they only work if you know your coordinates. If you know where you are.

And I didn’t.

At first, I lost direction slowly.

A few missed cues. A few days of fog. A few months of saying yes when I meant no. A few too many mornings of waking up with that hollow ache in my chest—the one that whispers, “This isn’t working,” but never tells you what would.

Then it got louder.

My body stopped cooperating. My energy vanished. My thoughts became hostile. My relationships turned into mirrors I didn’t want to look in. The life I’d worked so hard to build became heavy, brittle, impossible to carry.

I thought: I’m failing.

But the truth was: I was full.

Too full.

Of grief. Of silence. Of performance. Of pretending.

No one tells you how much weight you can carry before collapse becomes your only clarity. When the maps stopped working, I stopped moving. At first I thought I was lazy. Broken. Weak.

Then I realized: I wasn’t broken—I was burdened.

I wasn’t lost. I was standing still because the ground under me was sacred.

And if I was ever going to move again, it couldn’t be toward someone else’s destination.

It had to be toward something true.

There’s this moment in every initiatory journey where the old system falls apart. Where no path forward looks familiar. Where your own body becomes foreign. Where nothing anyone says makes sense anymore—not even the people you used to trust. It’s terrifying. It’s quiet. It’s disorienting.

And it’s holy.

Because in that moment, a different kind of knowing emerges. Not from books. Not from gurus. But from inside your own bones.

From the ache.

From the field.

From the part of you that’s still alive under all the layers of noise.

That’s where the compass lives.

A compass doesn’t give you a route.

It gives you orientation.

It doesn’t say “Go here.”

It says, “Here’s where you are.”

And that, for me, was the beginning.

Not a strategy. Not a morning routine. Not a declaration of goals or a 12-week plan. Just a quiet return to sensation. A willingness to feel again. A willingness to ask different questions.

Not “What’s wrong with me?”

But:

“What am I carrying?”

“Where does it hurt?”

“What is this pain pointing toward?”

Because pain, it turns out, isn’t a flaw in the system.

It is the system.

It’s the compass needle. The magnetic pull. The flicker of feedback saying:

Something here needs to be seen.

Something here wants to move.

And the more I listened to that needle, the more I started to find my way—not back to who I’d been, but forward to who I was becoming. Not by choosing goals. But by choosing honesty.

I started asking simpler questions.

“Where does my body feel safe?”

“What belief am I still gripping like a weapon?”

“What truth am I avoiding because it would change everything?”

And:

“What’s one thing I can move today—with care, not force?”

Not everything needs to shift. But something does. Something always does. And if you listen closely, you’ll know what it is.

There’s power in pausing.

There’s magic in orientation.

And there’s grace in starting exactly where you are.

Because when the map breaks, you become the compass.

Not because you know the way.

But because you know how to listen to what hurts—and follow it home.

~