Awakening the Heart: Reconnecting to Self-Love, Purpose & the Wisdom Within
There’s a rhythm that lives within each of us — the steady pulse of life beating beneath our ribs. It is ancient, constant, and wise. And yet, for many of us, that rhythm becomes drowned out by the noise of modern living — the endless striving, pleasing, fixing, and doing. We lose touch with the gentle wisdom of the heart, and in its place we learn to survive on autopilot.
For years, I thought survival was strength. I knew how to hold everything together — for others, for family, for appearances. But deep down, I was slowly disappearing.
The Moment We Forget
Our forgetting rarely happens in one dramatic instant. It’s a slow drift — a gradual turning away from ourselves. It begins with small betrayals: saying yes when we mean no, staying busy so we don’t have to feel, holding everyone else while silently collapsing inside.
For me, the forgetting began early. I grew up feeling different, using food to fill what couldn’t be filled. Later, I sought validation through relationships, believing love would fix the emptiness I carried. When someone I loved fell into addiction, I devoted myself to saving them. I poured my heart, my energy, my entire being into helping — and in the process, abandoned myself completely.
I thought love meant holding on, but I’ve since learned that true love often means letting go.
The Heart as Our Compass
In early 2020, just as I opened my first wellness studio, the world came to a halt as the pandemic hit. Within weeks, I was forced to close the doors to in person experiences which is the only way I had ever known in both my healing work, events and meditation classes.
What followed was a season of loss and unravelling — a dark night of the soul. My family faced immense pain: trauma, addiction, and grief that ran deep. I tried to hold it all together, but the deeper the pain became, the more my heart constricted — not from lack of love, but from fear.
It was around that time that I began to truly understand the intelligence of the heart. Science tells us that the heart communicates more signals to the brain than the brain sends to it. When we’re connected to our heart, our body finds coherence — clarity, calm, and creativity arise naturally. But when we live from fear, the heart closes. We tighten, control, and disconnect from our own truth.
The question became clear: how could I create enough safety to feel again?
How could I soften into the tenderness I’d been avoiding — and remember that the heart is not fragile… it’s fierce?
The Awakening
My awakening didn’t arrive in one grand, cinematic moment. It came in tiny, trembling breaths — through the steady work of meeting myself as I was.
In 2022, I attended a retreat where I experienced breathwork for the first time. I arrived there completely shut down — numb, exhausted, surviving in a world that felt out of control. During one of the sessions, something profound happened. My mind stepped aside, and my heart began to open. I saw addiction — mine and others’ — as a mask we wear to protect what feels unlovable. That experience changed everything for me. It reconnected me to my body, my breath, and a truth that had always been there: healing begins when we stop running from what we feel.
During this time, I also sat in circles with women who became the space for what needed to be witnessed. Without even needing to hear the words, I felt them. “I see you.” No judgment. No advice. Just presence. In that moment I realised: healing is not a solo journey. We remember ourselves through each other.
Today, every retreat I hold and every circle I facilitate is an offering of that same remembrance — a sacred space to come home to what has always been within.
The Three Gateways of Heart Awakening
Over time, I’ve come to understand three gateways that guide us back to the heart.
1. The Breath — Returning to Presence
The breath is the bridge between the seen and unseen.
When we breathe consciously, we come home to the body, the moment, and the truth of what is. Presence is the portal through which love returns.
2. Ritual — Reclaiming Meaning
Ritual slows us down. It reminds us that everything can be sacred — from making cacao to lighting a candle. Ritual gives rhythm to our remembering and helps us move through life with intention.
3. Relationship — Remembering We Belong
Healing happens in the presence of love.
Every time we are truly witnessed, a piece of us comes back online.
Belonging isn’t something we find; it’s something we remember — together.
The Return Home
Maybe awakening the heart isn’t about becoming something new.
Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t truly you.
It’s a softening, a surrender, a willingness to live one degree more open.
To let softness become your new strength.
Because awakening the heart is not a single event — it’s a lifelong devotion to living from love, again and again, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s uncertain.
And in that devotion, we remember what we’ve always known:
We are love, walking ourselves home.
