The question arrived quietly, but it carried weight.

“Are you okay?” she texted.

I paused, feeling the tenderness beneath the words. She understood the tragedy unfolding in my family because I had let her see me—really see me—in a way I hadn’t yet allowed others to. She was asking from a place deeper than concern. She was asking from presence.

“I am not okay,” I typed.

Then deleted it.

Typed it again.

Deleted it again.

The truth was, I wasn’t okay.

Another truth was that I was more okay than I had ever been in my entire life.

I hesitated because I knew how those words might sound. I worried that if I sent the text, she would misunderstand what I meant—misunderstand me.

That was the real tension I was living inside. If I allowed the truth of who I am—what I feel, what I know, what my soul is asking for—to lead my life and be fully expressed, I feared people would misinterpret it. I feared they would mistake awakening for instability.

I worried she would read my words and think I was unraveling. But that wasn’t the kind of “I’m not okay” I meant.

I meant “I’m not okay” in a sacred way.

The kind of not okay that comes when you finally stop running. When you sit with yourself in stillness and look gently, honestly, directly into your own eyes. When you ask—without judgment—whether the life you have

built actually matches the truth of who you are and how your soul longs to experience this world.

It was the kind of “not okay” that signals a spiritual reckoning.

The kind where what truly matters rises to the surface—quiet but undeniable—felt deep in the heart and even deeper in the soul. The kind where you realize that alignment is no longer optional.

I was the kind of “not okay” where everything must change so that life can finally become what it was always meant to be.

The kind where you stop contorting yourself to fit the life you’ve created, and instead allow your life to rearrange itself around who you truly are.

Eventually, I texted back:

“Everything in my life is about to change.”