My life was destined to be a unique path that took me almost 40 years to accept and embrace. The dark night of the soul was a big part of it and today I’m so grateful for the experience

But first things first…

What is the Dark Night of the Soul anyway? I know, it sounds like a horror movie name.

“It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything.”– Eckhart Tolle.

I will save space in this blog, and you can read the full definition here.

In summary a Dark night of the soul it’s triggered by some external event, some disaster perhaps, on an external level.

In my case my fertility journey.

Oh boy…it was hard.

Up until my mid 30s I was reaching my goals, with hard work but I was on my path. I migrated to Australia, I’ve had amazing jobs as an art director and corporate creative designer in Sydney, an amazing life partner by my side, we had a busy and fun lifestyle. Then life sent me (us) a massive curved ball that made me question my own existence and no, I’m not being dramatic.

The fertility issues started as we decided to have children. 6 month pass, 8 months, a year and nothing. Doctors didn’t know why it was not working for us. We were doing everything “right” and still nothing. No explanation, no reason, it’s just not happening. To science we were perfectly healthy. Only years later that I understood that my body was screaming inside and I had no idea.

The year that marked my spiritual awakening was the year my ego started to collapse and the start of my journey of self-investigation and later transformation.

The dark night of the soul felt like I was living two lives. I was great at work, great with family and friends but at home it was sadness. The minute I returned home everything will crawl back on me, I felt hopeless. The life I thought I was going to have was evaporating month by month and we didn’t even know why.

To tell the honest truth 3 weeks of the months I was fine, I was deep in my own personal inner work, the fertility issues made me question everything in my life, –Do we really want kids? What if it never happens? What would people say? What to tell family?– and then 5 days a month shame, guilt, sadness, frustration and anger will crawl back on me like a dark stain. The crazy thing was I was very aware of what was happening, but I could not control it and I didn’t understand it. Slowly my ego started shifting, the character I was playing was out of its comfort zone and I started to question everything. I started reading like crazy and learning about neuroscience because at that point I needed to understand what was happening to me.

Then in 2020 the world stopped, and I know it was the hardest time to many but for me was the best thing that could have ever happened! No more parties, birthdays or baby showers, and more importantly, no more questions, just silence.

It felt like some sort of relief to just focused on me, my plants and my own journey.

I’m not sure exactly when or how but I started noticing that I was interested in different things, even the carer that I loved all my life was now meaningless. I wanted to do something different. From time to time, I was my usual self and then I will have these stages where I wanted to change, I was tired of my life, of the doctors, of the mystery of our situation.

Then something very strange and surprising happened, when everything was failing my inner detective was at its highest, I was super motivated to find clues and paths to solve my own mystery. I started doing transcendence meditation thanks to Dr. Joe Dispenza and that’s when things took a different level.

The first sign was my ‘family’. Every time we were doing a treatment that didn’t work the word ‘family’ will come to my mind, at first, my intuition started to awaken, it was like a voice in my head but I’m not sure where it was coming from. I thought that I was going crazy. In my insanity of looking for answers I noticed that every time I was asking the universe for answers, they were giving me a tiny piece of the puzzle. I felt like a huge alarm was going off saying –Vanessa is awakening!– I think about the movies Soul or Inside Out, it makes me laugh!

Then ‘my womb’ used to come to mind, every time. I perceived that my womb was a big piece in this puzzle, to science was perfectly normal, but I knew it was not, energetically I knew there was more to it.

Next was my dreams, I started to have dreams with women, with my family! Stories that were not mine but felt so familiar. One in particular that felt like it was me. At this point I was quite versed in all sorts of spiritual topics, so I knew I was accessing a past life! In this life I was a woman that lost her two children, a boy and a girl they drowned in ‘orange water’. I saw this happening and I felt her pain, when I woke up I was in tears and I was like –What was that????–. 4 years pass for me to fully understand that story and the full circle closed.

That woman was guiding my healing.

I’m not sure how long lasted The Dark Night of the Soul for me. I think with any awakening process the timeline is no clear, it’s made of a web of situations, changes, little deaths, learnings, realisations and even moments of bliss.

One thing it was clear in my mind. I was determined to find the truth, to find MY truth.

There were moments that my parents and even my husband said to me, –Why do you keep going? What do you think you will find? It seems so hard– I didn’t know what I was going to find, I just knew I was getting close and I was going to keep going.

Only when I surrendered to the universal knowledge of nature and the universe, when I said I want to go deeper, and I want to heal not only me but anyone that was involved in my story was when the real signs and the situations started to materialised. When the smoke started to lift and the realisation part in my awakening started.

I understood that all the time I was looking for external answers, people to help me I was learning something.

It took me a really long time to understand that the real change was within me.

I realised my body was the key, I was my own medicine.

Now, what can you learn?

Every spiritual journey is cyclical with ups and downs, and when things reach their lowest, we call it the "dark night of the soul." It’s never easy as the name states, and something to keep in mind is that the dark night of the soul is an essential part of spiritual awakenings.
The dark night of the soul doesn’t have a starting date and finishing date, it’s more of a convoluted group of experiences, like a roller coaster of emotions. It may feel like an existential crisis due to intense pain caused by something you have no control over. This could be, a death of someone you love, divorce, betrayal, health problems, job loss and so on.
You may become curious and drawn to spiritual teachers and practices during this awakening time and you'll slowly start to have realisations, you’ll start to notice all the connections, messages and signs around you.
At some point it's going to feel like you are reaching a breaking point. It will feel like the darkest time of your life. But remember, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, literally, you WILL start to find your inner-light, your true self, the most authentic YOU. The same unexpected way it started it will reach an end and you will rise from the ashes.

The Darkest Night of the Soul