Coming Home to My Worth: From Misalignment to Healing

There were years — decades — when I wanted to hurt myself almost every day. That longing began when I was seven, and for a long time I believed I had to earn acceptance, love, or worth. I chased validation through other people’s eyes, measuring myself by what others thought I deserved. What I’ve learned through spiritual awakening and steady inner work is that the place where the pain began is also the place that holds my healing: within.

I was never broken — I was misaligned. For a long time, misalignment looked like seeking purpose in the wrong places, silencing the small voice inside me, and believing numbness was survival. I fell into the pharmaceutical trap, trying to quiet the turmoil with chemistry. At one point I was taking six different medications to manage emotions, pain, and the heavy weight of survival. For some people, medication is necessary and life-saving — I honor that — but for me it became a bandage that kept me from asking the deeper questions. Today I no longer rely on medications to manage my emotions, and that’s part of how I reclaimed my sense of self and learned to listen to my soul again.

What feels striking to me now is that my personal story is also a vignette of how we, as a culture, often treat suffering. In Western medicine we move quickly to add chemicals into the body — and sometimes that’s the right and needed thing. But I’ve wondered if we’re too quick to stop there. Why don’t we also look widely at counseling, journaling, meditation, yoga, Reiki, and other modalities that help get to root causes and teach us how to become aligned with who our soul truly is?

Trauma does not vanish just because we numb it. It lives in the body and shows up in many forms: chronic disease, mood disorders, and persistent pain. Covering symptoms without processing the underlying wound isn’t correction — it’s camouflage. That’s why I ask myself (and you): before starting medication, might it be worth checking simple things that affect our brain chemistry — like vitamin D levels, sleep, nutrition, and social support? In Wisconsin, where over 50% of people have low vitamin D, simple labs and a conversation can sometimes change the course of care.

Healing, to me, became a practice of realignment. It meant learning to sit with the discomfort, to process grief, and to feel without immediately reaching for escape. It meant gratitude for the tough lessons — not because pain is a virtue, but because the lessons can teach us how to grow. It meant working with therapists and healers who helped me name the wounds and untangle the patterns. It meant practices that taught my nervous system how to soften: breathwork, journaling that uncovers the story beneath the story, movement that reconnects me to my body, and energy work that reminded me there’s a self under the pain that deserves tenderness.

If you’re in a low season right now — grieving, exhausted, or tempted to numb — I want to invite you to one simple step: feel one feeling. Name it. Breathe through it. Let a trusted person know. Small acts like these begin to dislodge the shame that keeps us stuck. Healing may include medication, therapy, spiritual practice, or a blend of many things. The point is not to choose one tribe and refuse the rest — it’s to follow the compassionate path that truly helps you root and realign.

I am not a problem to be fixed. I am not here to live through others’ eyes. I am here to embrace who I was created to be.

I AM ME. And that is enough. 🌿✨

And if you’re feeling unsafe in the moment, please reach out for immediate help — call 988 (U.S. Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), your local emergency number, or a trusted person you can be honest with. YOU MATTER. —Tammie