Let me tell you something nobody wants to hear:

Your suffering isn't random.

I know. I know how that sounds. Like some spiritual bypassing bullshit someone with a trust fund would say. But I've earned the right to say it. Five years unhoused. Five years learning what matters when everything else gets stripped away.

Stay with me here.

When you're living with purpose—real purpose, not the sanitized version people post about—everything shifts. The world stops being random chaos and starts revealing itself as a carefully constructed curriculum.

You don't get to ignore reality. You can't. But you begin to see every event, every person who shows up or disappears, every obstacle that derails your plans—all of it becomes material for your transformation.

Five years unhoused taught me that nothing is wasted.

Not the nights I couldn't sleep because my mind was running endless calculations of survival scenarios. Not the mornings when it took me four hours to accomplish what used to take thirty minutes. Not the moments when depression and stress crushed down on my body so heavily I could barely lift my arms. Not the days I wanted to disappear.

Every single one of those experiences was forging something inside me—an understanding I couldn't have accessed any other way.

The pleasant moments and the brutal ones—they're both necessary. They're both teaching you to separate what actually matters from what you thought mattered.

When you're navigating housing instability, you learn fast. The comfortable illusions don't just fade—they shatter. You start seeing patterns in the rubble. You realize there's nothing random about your life, that every detail carries purpose even when—especially when—it feels senseless.

Here's what nobody tells you about spiritual practice when you're in survival mode:

It's not an escape.

It's not about transcending your circumstances or pretending the material world doesn't matter. It's about finding the thread of meaning woven through everything, including the suffering. Maybe especially the suffering. It's about staying conscious when every instinct screams at you to numb out.

I've sat with Kabbalistic texts while wondering where I'd sleep that night. I've practiced yoga in shelters, trying to find stillness while chaos erupted around me. I've meditated through the kind of anxiety that makes your chest feel like it's caving in, your lungs forgetting how to work, your thoughts spiraling into darker and darker territories.

And somewhere in that contradiction—between the spiritual seeking and the raw material struggle—something cracked open.

I started to feel grateful.

Not in some toxic positivity way where you pretend everything's fine. But in a way that recognized: this is all for me. This is all teaching me something I need to know.

The adversity became the crucible I didn't know I needed. The obstacles that seemed designed to break me were actually designed to rebuild me—cell by cell, belief by belief—into something more aligned with what I'm supposed to become.

When this understanding finally breaks through—and it does, if you stay with it—suffering transforms.

Not because the pain disappears. It doesn't. But because you start perceiving it differently. You begin to see that everything, absolutely everything, was arranged specifically for your advancement. For your correction. For your movement toward the ultimate goal, whatever that is for you.

That's when darkness becomes light.

Not because the darkness wasn't real—it was devastatingly real. But because you finally understand what it was illuminating all along. You see that it was never trying to destroy you. It was trying to reveal you.

This is what I mean when I talk about spiritual alchemy. It's not metaphor. It's the actual process of transmuting the heaviest, most painful experiences into the foundation of something unshakeable.

Into internal peace that doesn't get swayed by external circumstances.

Into the kind of resilience that becomes an imprint on your soul, not just a story you tell yourself to feel better.

I'm still in the middle of this process. Still rebuilding. Still learning to trust that every setback is a setup, that every closed door is protecting me from something or pointing me toward something better.

But here's what I know now that I didn't know five years ago:

The curriculum is perfect.

Even when it's brutal. Even when it brings you to your knees. Even when you can't see the purpose for years afterward.

The pain isn't punishment—it's preparation.

And if you can stay present to it, if you can resist the urge to numb out or give up or declare yourself broken beyond repair, you'll discover that you were never being destroyed.

You were being forged.

What I'm asking you:

If this resonates, hit reply and tell me what you're learning in your own fire right now. I read every response. Your stories shape what I write next.

And if you're finding value in these raw, unfiltered reflections on transformation, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support directly enables me to continue this work while I rebuild toward stable housing and sustainable creative practice.

This is a journey we're taking together. Thank you for being here.

— [Your Name]

P.S. — Next week I'm writing about what Kabbalistic texts taught me about survival that therapy never could. Subscribe so you don't miss it.