You’ve probably heard versions of this story. Imagine …
Everything was going relatively well, but suddenly cracks started to appear in your life.
You wake up one morning and discover you have lost your job.
You purchased a new car a few months prior and have a huge loan to repay.
In a few months, your close family member passes away suddenly.
Not long after that, your husband or wife decides they want a divorce, and so, you are going through a bitter divorce and custody battles for your children.
Life doesn’t seem kind to you.
You can say life seems unfair to you; it seems to have turned away from you.
What Does It Mean When Things Start to Fall Apart in Your Life?
It wasn’t long after I experienced a deep and profound spiritual experience that I briefly mentioned in Episode 1, before parts of my life started to slowly unravel.
I ended my romantic relationship without fully understanding the gravity of who he was and what it meant in the bigger picture. I knew something had happened to me in the relationship, but I didn’t have the language for it — what is now called “narcissistic abuse” or “pathological love relationships (PLR).”
I knew I had met one of the worst sides of human nature, and it was a very confusing time.
Around the same time, a new opportunity was presented to me 3000 miles across the United States, far away from my previous life.
This new opportunity represented my new life, my new beginning. And I was excited to start over. After all, I am a warrior. I had endured a long and traumatic childhood and not only survived but made monumental changes in search of a better life. At the core of my being, I knew amazing things were ahead.
But I didn’t know what this new beginning had in store for me.
Exacerbated by the 2020 pandemic, people I thought were friends turned out to be characters from the last season of “Somebody That I used to Know”.
I started making new friends. They would start off well, then people would get busy …and slowly disappear. I was busy, so I chalked it up to the busyness of the modern age of technology. Then some friends died, and others moved away. My social life was slowly dismantled, including some family members.
Eventually, for a period of time, all relationships dropped away, and I stopped looking for them.
It felt as though I was living on an island.
No one was coming. All I had was me.
What is the First Step of Creation?
The first step of creation is destruction.
In depth psychology, there is the paradox of creation and destruction that is fundamental to understanding the cycles of the psyche. At its core, this principle reflects the natural processes of life—birth and death, growth and decay, transformation and dissolution.
Creation cannot emerge without the clearing of space, and destruction, though often painful and unsettling, is a necessary precursor to renewal. This dynamic interplay lies at the heart of personal and collective transformation.
From a Jungian perspective, the destruction inherent in creation is symbolized in the alchemical process of calcination, where the old self is burned away to reveal what is essential.
The psyche is an organism striving toward wholeness, a process Carl Jung referred to as individuation. To reach this state, the ego must confront and release outdated patterns, defenses, and illusions.
These constructs, which once served as protective scaffolding, can become prisons, limiting growth and obscuring the deeper self.
Consider the mythical phoenix, a symbol of death and rebirth. In its fiery demise, the phoenix demonstrates that destruction is not an end but a transformative passage. The ashes hold the seeds of a new beginning.
Similarly, in our psychological journeys, moments of loss, crisis, or upheaval can feel like annihilation. Yet, these experiences often strip away what no longer serves us, clearing the ground for a more authentic expression of our inner truth.
Depth psychology also recognizes the shadow—those aspects of ourselves we repress or deny. Engaging with the shadow can feel destructive, as it dismantles the ego’s carefully curated image of identity. However, this confrontation is crucial for integrating the disowned parts of the psyche.
In acknowledging the shadow, we reclaim the energy bound within it, enabling a fuller, more creative engagement with life.
If you look around, cultural myths and collective movements echo this principle. And revolutions, while disruptive, pave the way for new social paradigms. Natural ecosystems thrive through cycles of destruction and regeneration, such as forest fires that make way for fresh growth.
These patterns remind us that destruction is not inherently negative but an integral phase of renewal.
In embracing the destruction inherent in creation, we align ourselves with the rhythm of transformation. It is an act of courage and surrender—to let go of the old, trusting that the void will give birth to something new.
This alchemical process teaches us that every ending contains the potential for a beginning and that true creation emerges from the fertile ground of what has been released.
When I understood that the first step to the creation of my new empowered self was the destruction of the old, I felt relief. I accepted that my path was different. What had initially felt like punishment suddenly felt like a gift, and I cherished it. Solitude was my friend. It was time for me to be with myself, with no distractions.
I was focused on who I was becoming in the journey of self-discovery.
This was a path for me to walk alone.
Isolation Isn’t Punishment — It’s Sacred Refinement.
As a scientist, I was used to making judgements and decisions on my own, so this was not a new place for me.
Every day, I was coming up with my own plans, making risk assessments, evaluating my own logic, decisions, and results, and recalibrating in a self-correcting cycle.
I was thinking on purpose, living on purpose, and reflecting on my thoughts and where they came from. What thoughts joined the initial thought and why those thoughts were connected.
I was my own best friend and my best companion, and at work, I found myself less and less interested in talking and mostly did the listening and observing. Not because I didn’t have something to say, but because my senses were fine-tuned, and I was learning so much more from listening and observation.
I became less interested in judging what someone else was doing or saying because they knew what was best for them, and it was none of my business.
To this day, I love my solitude.
This time brought me immense clarity. On whom I was at the core, what I wanted in life, what was important to me.
This was a refinement process, a renewal, a rebirth.
I discovered my inner strength and resilience that I wouldn’t have without this time of solitude.
This was a sacred time for transformation.
I grew the most in silence.
Now I know what it means to have a good friend because I know what good friends do and don’t do. I know what kind of partner I want to have in life, one that is authentic and complements who I am. Anything less will not do.
I don’t seek outside validation because it doesn’t mean much to me.
I learned to self-lead my life understanding that choices have consequences, and every day I wake up joyful that I get to live another day and live it on purpose.
I also learned that the relationship that is most challenging is the most sacred. It grows you the most, doesn’t it? Bless it for all the lessons, clarity, and wisdom it brought into your life.
But when you are going through the shadow work, it may not seem that way. It feels as though something has gone terribly wrong.
The Gift of Solitude — A Space for Transformation
If you feel like your life has fallen apart and even though you are progressing in your healing, you don’t quite get it, know this — nothing has gone wrong. On the path to greatness, sacred parts of you that were once disempowered in some way asked to come back home to you, to wholeness.
Integrating and loving those parts of you in solitude is the best thing that you can ever do for yourself.
And other things will fall away.
Things that are not in integrity with who you are fall away.
Treasure your solitude.
The process of creation is unfolding perfectly!
As we end this episode, I leave you with this quote from Rumi.
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart so that fresh, green leaves cangrow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
~ Rumi