Last month, I attended something called the Enlightened Warrior Camp, and I’m still trying to find words big enough to hold what happened there.
I went in tired and jaded. Not the kind of tired that a nap or vacation can fix, but soul-tired — the kind where you can’t remember when you last felt joy for something that once lit you up. The world feels gray and…. numb.
I’ve built businesses, carried people, solved problems, kept things afloat. I’d told myself I was doing what I had to do for my family, for my team, for the people who depended on me.
But somewhere along the way, on hindsight, I realised I’ve forgotten the most important person in the room — me.
I’d become the woman who held it all together — until she didn’t.
The Cracking Open
At the camp, we weren’t told much about what would happen. Just that it would challenge everything we thought we knew about fear, courage, and power.
I won’t share the specifics — not because they were secret, but because no description could capture the alchemy of it. Imagine your heart being both shattered and expanded at the same time.
Somewhere in the exhaustion and sweat, between the shaking and surrendering, something cracked open.
For the first time in years, I stopped fighting myself. Stop holding myself to the false standards that screamed “success” at the world.
In the stillness that followed, I realised I’d been chasing safety in all the wrong places — in overworking, over-giving, overachieving, overthinking.
I’ve mistaken control for strength.
But strength — real strength — isn’t about holding on. It’s about trusting yourself enough to let go. Trusting yourself enough to ask for help.
The Moment of Truth
There was one morning — I can still feel it — where we were hiking. The altitude, my wheezing, my sore knees, the mud, the slide, and oh, the many falls I had… my mind screaming I can’t.
I flagged out to the guide and said I can’t go on. And with all the compassion and love, she said to me…
“Yes you can. One step at a time. There’s no hurry.”
If I could cry, I would. I could only wheeze back then.
And then something in me whispered back, quiet but steady:
“You can. You always could.”
It was the first time I truly heard my own voice — not the one shaped by fear or duty, but the one that belonged to my soul.
That’s when I understood what the camp meant by “warrior.”
Not the fighter who muscles through pain.
But the one who meets her fear, looks it in the eye, and says — I’m still here.
“I am a warrior. I am willing to do whatever it takes.
I am a warrior. I act in spite of fear.”
Those words became more than a mantra. They became an awakening.
My team membered rallied around me. One held my hand and whispered encouragement. Another keep cheering me on. Another partially held the backpack of bricks I have to carry while another taught me to surrender to the slide while finding my centre of power.
The Practice of Self Trust
Coming home, I was wary that the fire would fade — that I’d slip back into the old patterns of control, of pushing and proving. But this time, something’s different.
Because self-trust isn’t a lightning strike. It’s a practice.
It’s the quiet decision to listen inward before reacting outward.
It’s choosing rest when your ego screams for productivity.
It’s telling the truth when it would be easier to stay silent.
It’s forgiving yourself for every time you abandoned your own needs to keep someone else comfortable.
And it’s learning, slowly and gently, that you never needed to be rescued. You were the hero all along.
There’s a particular peace that comes when you stop outsourcing your worth to achievements, relationships, or outcomes.
When you start believing that the same power that moved you to take your first breath still moves through you now — unshaken, unbroken, unstoppable.
The Warrior Reborn
When I look in the mirror now, I see someone familiar but freer. Someone who still has fears — but no longer lives by them.
I still have my responsibilities, my family, my business. But the difference is, I no longer carry them from fear. I carry them from love.
I used to think being strong meant doing it all alone.
Now I know it means being brave enough to ask for help.
I used to think purpose came from chasing the next big thing.
Now I know it begins the moment you trust yourself again.
And maybe that’s the whole point of the breaking open — not to destroy what was, but to reveal what’s always been inside.
Grounded. Fierce. Alive.
Different — in all the right ways.
A Note to the Reader
If you’re reading this and you’re tired — soul-tired — I want you to know something.
You’re not broken. You’re not behind. You’re not weak for needing rest.
You’re simply being called home.
The same power that rebuilt me is alive in you too.
You don’t need to earn it or prove it.
You only need to remember.
I believe in you.
And I’ll always believe in you — until the day you choose to believe in yourself too.
Love,
Faith
