Free to Shine: How I’m Rediscovering My Inner Light

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment it grows in, not the flower.” ~Alexander Den Heijer

I remember the girl I used to be. Light, full of life, and constantly in motion—like a little twirl of joy spinning through the house. There was this rhythm inside me, an effortless dance between curiosity and wonder. I’d tap dance through the kitchen, counting how many twirls I could do before I lost my balance.

The world felt vast, endless, and open. I didn’t just see beauty in big, grand things. I found it in small moments and delicate objects, like that little glass bird on the sofa table, a tiny piece of my world that always felt so fragile, so full of wonder.

As a child, I never doubted that there was more to life than what I could see. I had this deep connection to the world, to the beauty hidden within it. I would hold that bird in my hands while doing my chores, dusting around it with care. It was simple, transparent, nothing extraordinary, but in my eyes, it shimmered with significance.

That lightness, that sense of awe, stayed with me for a long time. But somewhere along the way, things started to shift.

By the time I was in my thirties, I had built a life that looked perfect on the outside. I worked hard to create it. I was meticulous, structured, dedicated. I followed the steps I thought I was supposed to: high-paying corporate job, beautiful house, two kids, vacations—the kind of life people admire.

On Facebook, we looked like the ideal family, smiling on beaches, posting about our Florida trips, standing in front of our towering house with that sparkling SUV in the driveway. But beneath the surface, I was crumbling.

The lightness, the sense of wonder that had once danced so freely within me, was gone. I had replaced it with structure, control, and a constant need to keep everything in check.

I would lie awake at night, my mind spinning with numbers, running the calculations over and over. The debt we had accumulated was crushing, and every bonus I earned was already spent before it even hit the account. I would total up the bills in my head, again and again, hoping that if I recalculated just one more time, the numbers would somehow change, the debt would somehow shrink, but it never did. I was suffocating under the weight of it all.

On the outside, I kept up the facade. I went to work, managed my family, kept the smile in place. But behind closed doors, I was breaking.

I’d cry in the shower so no one could hear me. I’d cry in the car, on my way to work, during moments where I was supposed to be “on,” a career woman with it all together. And then at night, after my husband and kids had fallen asleep, I’d lie in bed, silently crying into my pillow, overwhelmed by the crushing realization that despite everything I had built, I was miserable.

There was a day, driving to work early one morning, when I saw the sun just beginning to rise. The sky was that deep, almost-black shade of pre-dawn, and then, there it was—the light. The same light I had seen thousands of times before, but this time, it hit me differently.

I remember thinking, At least one day I’ll die. At least one day, I won’t have to feel like this anymore. The idea of my mortality didn’t scare me—it brought me comfort. The idea that this pain, this life that felt like a trap, wouldn’t last forever… it felt like relief.

In that moment, a quiet truth began to take shape: something had to change. I couldn’t keep living this way, reaching for comfort in places that only deepened my pain. Somewhere, I had lost myself, drifting in an unhappy, unstable marriage, bound by a fear of judgment, a lack of self-worth, and the overwhelming weight of needing to please everyone but myself.

The thought of leaving felt paralyzing, so I searched for solace anywhere I could find it. In moments of darkness, thoughts of my own mortality, and even fleeting thoughts about my husband’s, seemed to offer a strange sense of release. But I knew these weren’t answers—they were signals of how lost and trapped I had become, craving a way to ease the suffering but not knowing how.

The truth was, it wasn’t freedom from my life I needed; it was freedom from the suffering within it. What I wanted wasn’t an escape but to find my light again, that part of me that once danced through life, open and filled with joy.

She was still there, buried beneath years of silence and strain, waiting to be rediscovered. I knew that if I didn’t make a change, I risked losing her—losing myself—forever. And so, that realization became a turning point, a call to rise from within and seek out the light I thought I had lost.

It took years—therapy, coaching calls, long coffee dates with friends, journaling, crying, and rediscovering who I am—but slowly, I started peeling back the layers. The walls I had built around my heart, the ones I thought were protecting me, were actually suffocating me. Piece by piece, I took them down, and with every wall that crumbled, more light began to shine through.

Then, I met my now-husband. He wasn’t part of the plan. I had been so focused on fixing myself, on healing, that I didn’t expect to find someone who would see me, truly see me, in the midst of it all. But there he was, with love and patience, willing to walk alongside me on this journey. And with him, I learned to let even more light in.

But life wasn’t done testing me. After all the healing, all the rebuilding, I lost my dad. His death was like another wall coming down, not in the way the others had fallen—this one was different. It wasn’t a wall I had built, but it was one that kept me tethered to the past, to who I was before.

Sorting through his things, going through the house I had grown up in, I found that little glass bird. Still intact. After all these years, all the moves, all the changes, that tiny, fragile bird was still there. And I realized something: I’m still here too.

I had been through so much—divorce, rebuilding, loss—but my light, the one that had been buried for so long, was still there. It had always been there. And now, after all the pain, after all the walls had crumbled, that light was finally free to shine again.

I am the light. The light that had been hidden, buried under years of expectations and pain, was always within me. And now, after all the healing, all the self-work, I can see it so clearly. The light is me, and it is you. We all have that light within us, no matter how deep it’s buried, no matter how dark it feels. It’s there, waiting for us to let it shine.

This is your moment. Your light is waiting, just like mine was. It’s always been there, and it always will be. All you have to do is let the walls come down, piece by piece, and watch as your light shines brighter than you ever imagined.