Finding the Way Back To Your Heart

It isn’t always the shadows that scare me, You live long enough and you are bound to have collected your share of traumas, fears and failures. Even the best laid plans are always made with a contingency clause A, B, C and even a softy formed D, just in case.

You expect the hard times. You’ve lived them enough to understand the strength it takes to bear the weight of their pain. Often times choosing your own pain in exchange for the pain of another, knowing the capacity for which you can hold while maintaining the hope it takes to make it through.

It’s so easy to let go. To let the mind sweep you deeper into hopelessness and despair. To allow fear to cast shadows of doubt so dark you forget who you are. But the shadow cannot exist without the light and it is in the darkest moments we discover the truth.

This last year I fell deeply into my human experience. Something I had found controlled balance in since getting sick. I had the complete freedom to be so focused on my spiritual expansion that I wasn’t prepared for the experience of having that glass bubble shatter to pieces. My path was tested. What I had learned, the way I moved, the vibration I held, my faith, my practice, my discipline. All of it.

And I failed.

I let my experiences overcome me, losing myself in the chaos and change. Letting fear and desire be the guiding light. Feeling as there was no place in my experience for my light to lead the way. I flatlined and made myself small, experiencing parts of myself I hadn’t seen in decades. Making choices I knew were not in alignment with my highest potential yet feeling too lost and spiraling to stop myself from continuing to fall.

The darkness. The despair. The fear of the unknown. Suffocating me as I pushed myself to find balance. To allow myself to experience joy. To have fun and be free. To rediscover what brings happiness to my life.

I remember saying time and again that I don’t feel like myself and it took several months to realize that I am no longer who I was nor am I yet who I am becoming. Of course I don’t feel like myself. The person before the trauma did not survive and the person who no longer knew what was real has also gone. What’s left are the fragmented pieces of every person I’ve ever been. Taking the most beautiful parts and bringing them back together into something new. Something whole and unique with a story to be told.

And what is that story? What has this experience taught me?

What happens when you lose sight of your light?

I remember thinking to myself that you don’t get through the hell I’ve been through just to end up right back in the same hopeless cage. I’ve survived some of my greatest fears come true and in the work that I do, I know this is not by coincidence but divine design.

What I have discovered about myself has unveiled shadow aspects that have deeply affected my life in ways I had not truly understood and even now can only grasp to the depth to which I can hold.

I have grown to love and accept myself in ways that have haunted me in the past. I have accepted my limitations and honored when the time has come to accept what is and let go. I have witnessed my capacity to love, my integrity and the way I show up in this world. I have come face to face with the parts of myself I have rejected and been shown the ways in which I seek from others that which I refuse to bring to myself.

The greatest gift has been the illumination of my darkest shadow. The one with the most pain and the worst fear. The one distorting me from seeing the truth. That I am divine. I am worthy. I am a light in this world. Not less than. Not the hopeless failure my mind tries to make me believe. I am all that I am. Not just the broken pieces but the light that illuminates that all is divine. That my pain and my experiences have not been for nothing but the catalyst my soul needed in order to fully step into my purpose here on earth.

This was the initiation.

To remind me the weight that humanity holds. To remember that the shadow can not exist without the light. To find my way back home to all that I am. To find my way back to my heart.

May 11, 2026 | Heather Harti, Soul Star Inspired Wellness