What if the greatest tragedies of your life were actually the catalysts for your transformation? What if faith, honesty, and gratitude could take you from the depths of despair to a life filled with purpose and peace?
I’ve lived through my fair share of pain—loss, caregiving, exhaustion, and moments of doubt so deep I almost didn’t find my way back. Yet, through faith and a commitment to living with integrity, I’ve discovered a truth that has carried me forward: even in the darkest moments, there is an opportunity for growth, connection, and co-creation with Spirit.
This is my story of how trauma became a turning point, not just for survival, but for ascension.
The Catalyst for Growth
Master Roshi.
What a man, and what a friend! For 25 years, I had the privilege of learning from my spiritual teacher and soul friend, a man my partner and I both jokingly called my “not a husband,” because no one in our lives could ever fully understand the depth and closeness of our friendship.
He had been a college professor to us both and later became my boss, which was all too short an experience. I spent only six years teaching at the college when life made it clear it had other plans for me. When I left my teaching job to care for my father when he unexpectedly fell ill (not realizing the entirety of the life before me would be consumed with caregiving and that I’d never return to teaching), I thought that we’d become distant. God had other plans.
Master Roshi guided me in the beginnings of my career as a teacher, but he also planted the seed of a different kind of teacher in me. He taught both my partner and me so much about spirituality and living in fullness, but especially me. He taught us about life, God, and the Christ Consciousness we had long been seeking to understand—offering a perspective far removed from the religious, dogmatic upbringing we had both experienced. He wove together wisdom from Eastern traditions, theology, and his own life experience, creating this tapestry of understanding that made spirituality feel alive and accessible (a fitting analogy, as he did love his tapestries!).
We held him in such high honor as a leader and teacher in life that when my partner and I finally had a viable pregnancy and knew our baby would soon be in our arms, we asked Master Roshi to be our son’s godfather. He not only graciously accepted that role but fulfilled it just as gracefully. He was there for everything, both joyous and heartbreaking.
When our son was born, we both found ourselves in the hospital for a week. I was re-admitted just three weeks later, nearly dead from an infection after complications from giving birth, and Master Roshi stayed in our home to care for our one-month-old baby (and our two dogs) until I was well enough to return. He held my hand, and our miracle baby, and supported us through my recovery while my partner struggled to make ends meet for our family, often working 60-80 hour weeks. Months later he baptized our baby boy at the creek in a private ceremony we held once I had recovered enough for us to make the hike. His love and offer of support never wavered, in any area of life.
Not long after that, when we discovered that the basement of our home was infested with black mold, Master Roshi took all three of us into his home and helped us figure out a new plan. We were young parents struggling on many levels, as life seemed determined to throw us challenge after challenge no matter how hard we worked to get ahead. Seeing our situation, he devised a plan: we would move into his late parents’ home the following year and rent to own it while sorting out the other mortgage and situations holding us back.
I could go on, but you get the picture. He took his role in our lives seriously, despite the whispers and raised eyebrows about the closeness of our relationship.
He was our guide—my family’s guide—but especially mine. He became my anchor after my father died, stepping into that role with grace and wisdom. He helped me build a foundation of knowledge that prepared me for the challenges I would face, and he offered me the spiritual tools to navigate life’s hardest moments with strength and faith.
His example was the true catalyst, for me. The way he served others, not just us but so many in our community and in the world, selflessly and with unwavering faith, showed me what it truly means to live in alignment with God. Master Roshi’s life wasn’t just one of teaching; it was one of embodiment. He lived what he taught, and through him, I began to see my own spiritual calling for what it was.
When I compared and contrasted the selfless way he lived his life to the selfishness I saw in other so-called “friends,” the contrast was blinding. He gave without expectation, except for respect for Self from us—because it was only through living with integrity and honor for the Self and the God within us that anyone could truly respect him. Respect was his only “price.”
Through his example, I began to see how living with honor and integrity allows one to lift others closer to love and God. In contrast, the so-called “friends” I had been clinging to took without giving, pulling me further from my purpose. Master Roshi helped me understand that serving God isn’t about sacrifice for the sake of pleasing others—it’s about living in alignment with divine truth, love, and purpose.
Faith, Gratitude, and Honesty as Anchors
Living with faith, gratitude, and integrity has become my anchor in difficult times. My father, a deacon of the church most of my life, and growing up in a Christian home, instilled these values in me from a young age, but I often fought with the dogma. Master Roshi, who subsequently became very good friends with my father, solidified my understanding of faith, gratitude, and integrity in a way that made them real and tangible. He taught me these lessons through lived experience, in a way the relationship between a headstrong child and rule-driven parents never could.
Master Roshi wasn’t just an ordained minister; he was also a scholar who understood the bigger picture behind the rules. He saw their purpose and context rather than enforcing them rigidly. He was both a man of deep faith and a hippie, blending structure and freedom in a way that resonated with me on a profound level. Accepting those lessons from him came so much easier, probably because I felt like I was choosing to embrace them rather than being told I had to. Spoiler alert—I wasn’t. It was divinely orchestrated.
And, here we are.
These principles have kept me steady in recent years, allowing me to align with what is good and righteous, changing my behaviors and giving me the strength to make and follow through with some of the hardest decisions of my life. They remind me to approach life consciously, avoiding unnecessary mistakes and messes that would only add to my burdens.
Still, living by these principles wasn’t always easy. In moments of doubt and hardship, I sometimes questioned my purpose and struggled to see how these values could guide me through the chaos. That’s when divine intervention stepped in, as it so often does, to illuminate the way forward. One such moment came through a dream from my father—one that wouldn’t fully make sense until years later.
When my father passed away, years before the experiences had culminated which brought me to true enlightenment about who I am and what my purpose truly is, he came to me in a dream and warned me about angels being “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” I now understand why. He was guiding me to lean on Master Roshi.
At the time, I thought he was being literal. There may be some truth to actual dark energies posing as Godly ones, but the reality is that he wasn’t talking about the picture of angels I had in my mind. Years later, while Master Roshi was sick, I learned that my father had also come to him in a dream the night he died. My father charged him with looking after me, telling him that I had a role to fill in this world that I was unaware of and that I didn’t yet understand. My father said that my way of loving and forgiving so freely wasn’t the righteous way of living that I thought it was.
Master Roshi shared with me, just weeks before his death, that he had already been guided to this vision long before his dream involving my father. He told me that, a decade earlier, he had been given an inner knowing—what he called an “innerstanding,” as opposed to “understanding”—that I would serve a larger purpose in his life in the future. That purpose, as it turned out, was “walking him home.” He accepted the mission God and my father had presented to him without ever telling me. How fascinating is that?
Realizing the realities I did after Master Roshi’s death is what showed me this. We often hear cliché quotes about not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone, but for me, it was more like not knowing what what I had was trying to teach me until the teacher “left the chat.”
His passing, and suddenly realizing the reality of the connection we shared because it no longer existed in the 3D, opened my eyes to the truth about what it means to live in alignment with God. It opened my eyes about my dreams, about the truth in energetic connections with others, and about so many of the things spirituality holds as truth regarding the afterlife. Loving and forgiving freely isn’t wrong, but without discernment, it allows others to take advantage of the goodness we offer. Master Roshi taught me that true service to God and others requires clarity, boundaries, and strength of purpose.
The Connection Between Trauma and Spiritual Ascension
What I’ve shared here about some of my experiences may not seem on the surface to flow well (in the sequence of my life) to this conclusion, but the moral of the story is this: caregiving, while deeply honorable, can also be deeply traumatic—and it was for me.
For those unprepared or thrown into the role unexpectedly, caregiving can swallow your soul at so many levels. Even with the path I was on and the experiences I had leading up to my caregiving journey with Master Roshi, that experience was one of the most emotionally and spiritually traumatic of my life. I was used to pouring myself into someone else’s needs, often at the expense of my own. I willingly did so. But until the culmination of my understanding—which was catapulted into reality with Master Roshi’s passing—I hadn’t realized just how taxing the emotional and spiritual toll could be. And it can be almost wholly crushing.
There were times in my life—especially in the last few years, world events notwithstanding—when the darkness was so consuming that I almost didn’t find my way back. Depression and fear fed my pain, threatening to overwhelm me. Yet, each time, God’s presence pulled me through.
Leaning on my faith rather than on alcohol or other worldly pleasures—or on people who I knew but didn’t want to admit were either manipulating or outright scapegoating me—was the only thing that saved me from falling into a dark spiral. That spiral would have led to alcoholism, abuse (whether by others or by myself), webs of lies, delusion, and disillusionment. I know this because I had allowed it to in the not-so-distant past. In short, it would have equaled a life of sin for me (a topic I will cover very soon).
Through this, I realized that trauma is not just a test—it’s an invitation to grow closer to Spirit. It’s an opportunity to strip away the illusions of control we cling to and surrender to a higher wisdom, trusting that even the deepest pain serves a purpose. Trauma, as painful as it is, can be the very thing that breaks us open—forcing us to confront the parts of ourselves we’d rather ignore, the wounds we’d rather bury, and the truths we’d rather not see. It’s not punishment; it’s refinement.
By surrendering what we cannot control, we create space for divine guidance to enter. This surrender isn’t about giving up—it’s about letting go of the fight against reality and leaning into faith. It’s about recognizing that our suffering, while excruciating in the moment, is a tool Spirit uses to shape us, to align us more closely with our purpose, and to deepen our connection with God. When we trust in that process, we stop seeing trauma as something meant to destroy us and start seeing it as a means of transformation and growth.
Standing in Power: Finding Purpose Through Pain
I hope the realizations I was given the opportunity to have through the specific traumatic experiences in my life can help others begin to examine their own traumas for the lessons they hold. These lessons are not there to condemn us, but to teach us, to guide us, and to strengthen us. When we use those lessons to build something new in our lives, we align with Spirit and ensure that our traumas don’t destroy our spirituality or our sense of self.
That is the reality of not being a victim of our circumstances or our own pain—whether it was caused by fate, the actions of others, or our own—and of standing in our power. It is about standing with God—in His power. For without Him, we have no power at all.
To anyone feeling stuck in pain, I would say this: get still. Sit quietly with yourself, no distractions, and just listen. In the stillness, you create space for Spirit to speak. The answers you seek are already within you, waiting to be heard.
The Twin Tree Project 