For 30 years I tried to earn my way into peace.
But peace isn’t a prize.
I Was Never Out of Alignment—I Was Just Out of Regulation
For 30 years, I tried to earn my way into peace.
But peace isn’t a prize. It’s what happens when your nervous system finally feels safe enough to stop performing.
This morning I didn’t wake up craving a coach. I didn’t need a new ritual or another reminder to get in alignment. What I needed—was quiet. Warmth. Stillness. And the truth of what my body already knows:
I’m not out of alignment. I’m out of the trance.
It used to start with a question:
Why don’t I feel satisfied with my life?
I’d watch women who seemed content—living slowly, creating gently, not chasing, not proving. And I’d feel the ache.
Not jealousy. Not longing. Just a bone-deep recognition: That’s what my soul remembers. That’s the way of being I’ve always craved.
But I didn’t know how to access it.
So I built a ladder of performance to climb toward it.
Every morning became a checklist. A spiritual to-do list that promised if I just did enough, I’d finally arrive at the peace I was chasing:
Meditate. Sit still for 20 minutes. Light the candle. Follow the breath. Feel nothing. Try harder.
Ground. Walk barefoot on the cold grass. Visualize roots. Pretend the earth is holding you when you can’t even hold yourself.
Clear. Sage the apartment. Again. As if the smoke could chase away the feeling that you’re always one step behind.
Breathe. Inhale for four. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight. Wonder why your chest still feels tight.
Be grateful. List three things. Write them in the journal. Ignore the part of you that whispers: But I’m still afraid.
Stay high-vibe. Smile. Post something inspirational. Avoid the people who bring you down. Pretend you’re not drowning.
But the truth is, I wasn’t grounding—I was gripping.
I wasn’t clearing—I was coping.
I wasn’t aligned—I was exhausted from chasing alignment like a merit badge I could finally earn if I just tried harder.
And the sneakiest part?
It all looked spiritual. It looked “regulated.” It looked like a woman who had her shit together.
But my nervous system was still on red alert.
I wasn’t at peace. I was bracing.
Bracing for the next crash. The next unpaid bill. The next person to walk away. The next empty morning with nothing to give.
I’d wake up scanning for danger before I’d even opened my eyes. What’s wrong? What did I forget? What’s coming for me today?
My body never got the memo that I was safe.
Because I wasn’t.
Not in my marriage. Not in my bank account. Not in the version of myself I was performing for the world.
So I kept doing. Kept moving. Kept climbing the spiritual ladder, rung by rung, believing that if I just meditated enough, journaled enough, cleared enough—eventually I’d arrive.
At what, I didn’t know.
Peace, maybe. Satisfaction. The feeling of enough that seemed to come so easily to other women.
But it never came.
Because I was asking the wrong question.
I kept asking: What do I need to do to fix this?
When the real question was: Why doesn’t my body feel safe?
It wasn’t until I stopped doing and started listening—that I met the real threshold:
The moment I stopped trying to fix myself… and started letting my body tell the truth.
That truth sounded like:
If you felt your nervous system exhale reading this—if you recognized yourself in the grip, the performance, the exhaustion of chasing alignment—then you’re ready for what comes next.
This essay isn’t just words. It’s a doorway.
And on the other side? A full year of daily truth-telling that will help you move from dysregulation to deep, sovereign peace.
Right now through February 7th, I’m offering 20% off annual subscriptions to The Daily RE-WIRE—plus immediate access to my Breakthrough Guide.
The Guide isn’t another to-do list. It’s not more practices to perform or spiritual checkboxes to tick off.
It’s a roadmap for what I’ve learned in 30 years of trying to earn peace—and the moment I finally stopped trying and started living it.
Inside, you’ll find:
How to recognize when you’re gripping vs. actually grounding
The difference between spiritual bypassing and true regulation
Practices that help your nervous system feel safe (not just look regulated)
Permission to stop performing your way to peace
This is for you if:
You’re exhausted from doing all the “right” spiritual things and still feeling empty
You’re ready to stop treating your soul like a problem to fix
You want daily reminders that peace isn’t something you earn—it’s something you already have access to
You’re done with the trance and ready to trust yourself again
Here’s what you get:
365 days of essays like this one—raw, real, and written for women who are rebuilding their lives on soul time
Immediate access to the Breakthrough Guide
The full archive of everything I’ve written
A community of women who’ve stopped performing and started living
20% off through February 7th. One year. One choice. One exhale at a time.
This isn’t about adding more to your plate. It’s about finally setting the plate down.
Click below to claim your spot—and your nervous system’s permission to rest.
I’m tired.
Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. The kind that comes from decades of holding yourself together with duct tape and willpower.
I don’t wanna.
The rebellion that rises when you’ve been good for too long. When you’ve performed your way through life and there’s nothing left to give.
I can’t push anymore.
The surrender that feels like failure but is actually the first honest thing you’ve said in years.
I need to feel safe first.
Not after I’ve earned it. Not after I’ve crossed enough things off the list. Now. Before anything else.
And guess what?
That’s when I found the soul.
Not through hustle dressed in holy language. Not through performative “positivity.” But through quiet regulation.
Through letting my body rest without earning it.
Through staying in my pajamas when the old voice said get dressed, be productive, matter.
Through saying no to people I loved because my nervous system needed silence more than it needed approval.
Through finally, finally understanding:
Alignment doesn’t come from achieving spiritual perfection. It comes from repairing your relationship with safety.
Here’s what I didn’t understand for three decades:
Your soul can’t speak when your nervous system is screaming.
She’s there. She’s always been there. But she’s quiet. And quiet gets drowned out by panic.
So when I was meditating, journaling, grounding, clearing—I wasn’t actually connecting with my soul. I was trying to out-spiritual my trauma.
I was treating my practices like a fix. Like if I just did them right, I’d override the part of me that was scared, tired, and running on fumes.
But that’s not how it works.
You can’t meditate your way out of dysregulation.
You can’t gratitude-list your way out of a nervous system that doesn’t trust you.
You can’t high-vibe your way past the part of you that’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The moment my nervous system stopped gasping for air—my soul had room to speak.
And she didn’t say: Do more.
She said: Rest. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.
These days?
I don’t strive. I don’t beg the universe for signs. I don’t treat meditation like a vending machine where I insert my time and effort and expect peace to come tumbling out.
I breathe when I need breath.
I paint when I feel color.
I sit when I’m foggy.
I move when my body calls me into aliveness.
And when I don’t feel like doing any of it? I don’t.
Because I trust myself now.
Not because I’ve mastered some spiritual practice. Not because I’ve finally “arrived.”
But because I’ve stopped abandoning myself in the name of self-improvement.
This is the difference:
I no longer believe I have to earn peace.
I now know I was born with access to it.
It was never missing. It was never something I had to chase down, manifest, or achieve.
It was always here—waiting for me to stop performing long enough to feel it.
Waiting for my nervous system to exhale.
Waiting for me to stop gripping.
Waiting for me to trust that I don’t have to do anything to deserve rest, silence, or the right to simply be.
If this hits something in you—if your body exhaled as you read—then maybe you’re ready to come out of the trance too.
And not by doing more.
By doing less. Slower. Gentler. Truthfully.
By letting your nervous system tell you what it needs instead of overriding it with another practice, another mantra, another promise that this time it’ll work.
Maybe that’s the new alignment.
Maybe it’s always been.
Not the ladder you climb.
But the ground you finally let yourself rest on.
Thank you for being a lighthouse once again.
I can see all through my life I’ve been chasing safety.
Performing by someone else’s rulebook.
Choosing a marriage never meant for me, a religion that said it would save me until it didn’t, and a career that offered subsistence, but not sustenance.
Now that’s a breakthrough!
This piece resonated with me deeply. What I’ve come to realise over time is that the constant search for peace in a distorted world — by attaching ourselves to one system or another — does very little to truly settle the nervous system.
Why? Because more often than not, it is simply a carrot being dangled in front of the donkey. It looks inviting — crisp, nourishing, beautifully presented — but the game itself is rigged.
You may brush against it briefly, inhale its promise, watch others chasing their own carrots, feel a fleeting sense of belonging — and then the chase resumes.
Until one day, something shifts. The questions change. And instead of asking how to run faster, one begins to ask why the chase exists at all.