The Puzzle Pieces of Paradise

How do I feel and think this morning?

This morning, I felt the edge of surrender—the kind that visits after tender loss, like the one I experienced when I bravely faced my role at a yoga studio that didn’t share my values. I knew that space wasn’t mine to belong to forever, but I had hoped for something gentler—for community, for understanding, and genuine intentions that honoured the depth of sacredness of the practice and those amoungst it. While I was there, I showed up, even while healing from profound trauma because I needed some form of income to help my life rise in support. And when I learned I would be fired—for the first time in my life—I felt a wave of defeat and injustice; undervalued dignity. Not just for the job itself, but for the way it was presented: abrupt, manipulative, false, unkind, and misaligned.

The truth anchors me; I am not a victim.

I see;

the experience, painful as it was, made space for deeper alignment and a re-orientation to what is it exactly I need in my life and the life of those I love. It was painful but I chose to look into what clues Source wanted me to see; patterns of dysfunction and the keys to the reality I want to achieve. I learned more about myself and what cycles I’m walking away from. It forced me to meet myself with new strength, to release illusions, and choose to rise from truth because it is, and always will be, the only foundation that can hold the life I want to live, deserve to live, and came here to share.

My circumstances are fragile in an aspect; I don’t yet know where my next income will come from, and have been this way for far too long. But I do know this: I am being called into a deeper trust than ever before. I am learning how to stay well through the unknown. I may not know how to fly right now, but perhaps that’s not what’s being asked of me at the time.

Perhaps I’m meant to soften.

To be.

To make room—

for grace to find me.

That’s how I define love for my clients; alignment and practice — a way of being in the world, present with genuine inner values and engaged with actualized integrity. It frees one’s self into a space of success rather than mind-made constrictions of conditional worthiness. It let’s us develop our sense of dimensionality and into a lived experience of wholeness—fullness of life in Love. Maybe now, I apply that same medicine to myself.

As I write, I notice a quiet urge to minimize my story—as if I don’t have the right to name my struggle. But I do. I am on the edge, and it is okay to need help. It is powerful to name it.

I moved back to Toronto two years ago. Though I was raised here and I’m highly capable of taking care of myself, the current economic and social systems are not built for weathered lives. Sometimes I feel I’m falling—many times a day. And for months, I haven’t had the strength to say it aloud. Out of fear. That I’d be judged by the Divine, or my own higher self, or the World. That I wasn’t “healed enough,” “spiritual enough,” “empowered enough.” But today, I reclaim this truth: softness is not failure. Slowness is not weakness. And what nourishes the soul is a form of success no system can measure.

I’ve been carrying a broken heart—eight months now. It was cracked open by family. I asked for support, a gesture of love after years of separation, hoping to uplift myself out of generational poverty and walk a new path. I received only a fraction of what I needed and, worse, was met with shame and emotional harm. Boundaries were violated when all I sought was peace.

And for a while, I believed it was my fault—for being too loving, too trusting, too hopeful, too true. But the deeper truth is this: My Love is not wrong. My boundaries are not wrong. And my grief is not shameful. It is sacred. I no longer speak to please. I speak to honour the life within me. This is my work. This is my path. To speak the truth. To choose kind spaces. To love what is real. And to know that even those who hurt me are growing in their own way—away.

My balm is this: I have chosen love. For myself. For others. Again and again.

This morning, I followed the whispers of my intuition. I breathed. I got dressed. And though I was exhausted, I found unexpected energy. I danced. I shared beauty. I found joy simply in being alive. I saw beauty in myself again—where for days, I had only seen the tired eyes of a woman carrying so much. This—this is the rhythm of transformation. A harmony of grace and humanity. And it does not take away from the quality of my work. It enhances it. Because I live the very truths I share. I walk the path with integrity. And I offer only what I have tested and tended in the sacred fire of my own life.

Being a guide is not about image, power, or perfection. It is about serving a soul mission. It is about remembering that our callings are not performances—they are prayers of appreciation for all the Love and Life that surrounds us that honours the powers the be—to be, the same wholly energies that called us here to be joyful and happy and well as can be.

The world needs more of us—those willing to live in love, with love, through love.

We’re being asked to collaborate, courageously. To build new ways of belonging. To share our puzzle pieces—agape-style—so we can shape the landscapes of our individual and shared paradises.