This will be a soulful journey to rediscover yourself and align with your heart, your truth, your beliefs, your worth, your values and who you truly are. Sometimes I feel it more as a spiral, deeper not wider, we journey inward, closer, and closer to the heart of things. It aligned with my healing journey and my worldview - like I had a conversation with Deja about my experiences while she wrote this.

Coming home to ourselves feels like belonging; it is a state that holds us and enables us to hold others. But not once, as I walked through this or the aftermath, after he was gone, did I feel depressed or hopeless. When you conform to gain acceptance, you pretty much have to slice and rearrange bits of yourself to fit into that particular puzzle.With mindfulness, we can learn to move through these intense, challenging times in ways that don’t add to the suffering and difficulty that are already there.

A key step that can help us begin to settle ourselves when we are profoundly unsettled is to come home, to ourselves, in this moment, whatever is happening. Bringing our attention to our breath or to the sensations in our body helps us to stay on the platform of the now. When we internalize these messages, we form beliefs about what is “wrong” with us and repress them so deeply they become unconscious. How I hid from fear, and I hid from rejection, and I hid from the belief that I didn’t have what it takes to survive this world. This book is a catalyst for transformation, a guide to letting go, surrenduring to solitude, and discovering one's authenticity and purpose.I want to use my voice and resources to help build a world that is even a tiny bit safer, kinder for all people. The universe works in ways that we cannot comprehend at times, and this read came right when I needed it. But the real me – underneath all my learned coping patterns, how I tried to feel loved and get my needs met.