I’ve never had many friends growing up, and as an adult, it was the same.

I either had two or three friends, or I had that one friend, where we would spend all our free time together.

In 2019, I was going through some personal issues. I was having panic attacks every week, and it was due to being in a relationship with my ex.

At the time, my sister was studying to be a therapist, and she recommended a therapist to me.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the start of my self-love journey. I loved myself so hard, it triggered my spiritual awakening nine months later.

But during that first year of therapy, there were two people I did not want to lose: my ex and my best friend at the time.

I didn’t know why I had that fear when I started therapy, but looking back now, it was my intuition letting me know exactly who I was going to eliminate from my life.

In January 2020, I ended my relationship with my ex and experienced my first-ever kundalini awakening. It lasted for two weeks. I hardly slept, I hardly ate. I would go to work, collect my children from school, make their dinner, help them with homework, and once they were in bed, I would sit for hours in silence, in pure bliss, staring at the wall.

No one could understand how I could feel so much joy after ending a relationship.

I was genuinely buzzing from the inside, and I could feel a surge of energy moving within me.

You know when you’re standing on the edge of the train platform, and you hear that buzzing sound from the tracks, and you can even feel it in your body? That’s how I felt during those two weeks.

Five months later, I started seeing who my best friend really was. She’d gossip about me behind my back, tried to scam me for money, and was scamming the job I got her, too.

When I confronted her about her treatment of me, she said this is what everyone does, and no one taught her differently because of her upbringing. I had to remind her that we had similar upbringings, and it’s a choice to walk in truth or in dishonesty. I forgave her and continued with the friendship in the hope I wouldn’t lose her.

A month later, I found out she had done even more behind my back, and I ended the friendship immediately.

I didn’t get angry; I got sad. I saw her as one of my sisters. Whatever I had, I shared with her. If I ate, we ate.

And in that moment, I realised that growth doesn’t always feel good.

Yes, I chose myself.

Yes, I protected myself.

Yes, in that moment, I loved myself.

But it didn’t feel good. It felt like I had lost my right arm. I loved my friend. I valued her and our friendship, but I realised she didn’t love or value herself, so how could she love me?

Social media has a way of making life look black and white. But life is 99% grey and deeply nuanced.

You can choose yourself and still feel like you lost.

You can choose yourself and still grieve what you had to let go of in order to grow.

You can choose yourself and still doubt whether you made the right decision.

Growth doesn’t always come with celebrations.

Sometimes growth comes with a funeral procession you have to lead — while simultaneously burying the loss you loved.

But it does get easier.

The funerals become shorter.

The grieving lasts days instead of months.

And then, suddenly, you’re on your second ego death, and you surrender.

You decide you will not stand in the way of what must be released.

You welcome it with open arms because you’ve learned through every stage of growth that loss isn’t really loss.

There is no loss because we’re all connected. And every single one of us agreed to play our part so that each of us can reach the same goal. Finding our way back home to Source.