My spiritual growth journey began over a decade ago when I first stumbled into Buddhism, looking for something—anything—to help me survive the weight of my grief. At the time, I didn’t realize how much the path I was about to embark on would twist and turn, revealing not just light but also the heavy shadows of trauma that had silently shaped my life. In hindsight, I see now that I was trying to build a spiritual home on a crumbling foundation, unaware that the root of my being—quite literally—was out of balance.
Before I found Buddhism, spirituality wasn’t exactly a haven for me. It was more of a battleground. My paternal grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher for seventy years. Yes, seventy. On the other side of the family, my maternal grandmother nearly joined a Catholic convent before marriage changed her course. Religion was baked into the DNA of my family, but my parents were the rebels of the clan, allowing me to make my own spiritual choices. Sounds progressive, right? Not quite. Growing up in poverty meant spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ homes, and their homes came with a side dish of compulsory church attendance.
I still vividly remember the moment I was “saved” at a Baptist church, not out of faith but out of fear.
I was terrified of burning in hell for eternity, and it felt like the only option. The weight of that fear followed me into my adolescence, pushing me further from organized religion and deeper into confusion about what I actually believed. By the time I had the freedom to make my own spiritual choices, I wasn’t making any at all.
It wasn’t until I experienced the unimaginable—the loss of my fiancé, Jason, and my best friend, Tiffany, within two years of each other—that I began to question everything. Losing Jason and Tiffany shattered my world. I was left teetering between the abyss of atheism and the faint hope that something greater existed. My heart felt broken beyond repair, my depression was suffocating, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep living.
In my darkest moments, I turned to Buddhism. I can’t say it was a conscious choice or some grand spiritual epiphany. It was more like a lifeline—a way to survive my grief without completely unraveling. The mindfulness practices offered a reprieve from the storm in my head, and the teachings gave me space to reflect on the fragility of life. But what I didn’t know then was that I was merely scratching the surface of what I truly needed to heal.
I thought spiritual growth was about transcending my pain.
I didn’t realize it was about learning to root myself in safety first. Trauma doesn’t just live in the mind; it nests itself in the body, locking you into a state of survival. My survival mode wasn’t just emotional; it was biological, and it was deeply connected to my root chakra—the energy center tied to safety, stability, and feeling grounded.
For years, I tried to meditate my way out of the heaviness, thinking that enlightenment would come if I could just think hard enough about higher truths. But I never felt truly at peace. I’d get glimpses of joy, but it always slipped away, like trying to grasp smoke. I didn’t realize that my trauma, stored deep in my nervous system and tied to the root chakra, was keeping me stuck.
It wasn’t until I started to address my trauma—digging into the beliefs I carried from my upbringing, the fear I’d inherited from my past, and the physical tension in my body—that something shifted. Balancing my root chakra became the foundation for my healing. It wasn’t just about feeling safe in the world; it was about learning to feel safe within myself. Only then did I begin to experience a true spiritual awakening—one that felt stable, real, and grounded.
Looking back, I understand now why I struggled so much. I was trying to build a skyscraper of spiritual growth on an unstable foundation. Without the grounding of the root chakra, without addressing the trauma that kept me trapped, every effort to grow spiritually felt wobbly and unsustainable. Once I started focusing on safety and stability in my body and energy, the awakening I’d been seeking came naturally.
