2024 Tested Me – Here’s What I Learned About Growth 💜

2024 has been the hardest year of my life.

And I’ve had some doozies – as have we all. Can you relate?

While this year has challenged me in ways I never imagined, it’s also contributed to more spiritual growth in one year than I’ve experienced in my whole life.

(I say this with profound humbleness and gratitude and recognition that the universe may throw something deeper at me now to test my declaration.)

Here are seven of the many, many Truths I’ve learned this past year that are most present for me today. I hope they inspire you:

1. The more we listen to our intuition the louder it gets. We have spent most of our life gaslighting our inner knowing, ignoring it, pretending it’s not there, rationalizing it away with our mind, or seeking guidance from others outside of us rather than the wise knowing within. This just leads us astray and quiets that part of us that already knows our highest path. We waste so much of our precious time in this short life seeking validation or confirmation for what we already know to be true deep within ourselves. But when we listen and act on our intuition, it gets louder and clearer.

2. Sometimes it will feel like you are the only one in your corner fighting for you. People I have loved and trusted and looked to for guidance called me wrong, told me I couldn’t trust myself, and tried to make me feel guilty and steer me in a different direction. They were well meaning but do not know what it’s like to have my heart, to live in my body, and to have signed up for the mission my soul chose. To love yourself enough to choose yourself when everyone else seems to be telling you otherwise is perhaps one of the most important lessons we can learn in this Earth School.

3. Tears are healing – let them flow. I have cried more this year than ever before. I’ve grieved the loss of a future I intentionally built. I cried for the little girl in me who didn’t feel lovable, worthy, or loving enough. I grieved the death of my past self as I stepped wearily into the unknown of my future self I cannot yet fully see. I felt the depths of pain I have caused others. I wept for it all.

And just when I thought the grieving process was letting up, the universe would push me deeper. My heart has been broken wide open and while the pain has been excruciating at times, it has made space for the sweetest pleasure, deepest love, and magnificent joy. I now teeter between these two worlds on a regular basis and it’s beautiful.

4. The dark night of the soul is not a “night”. It’s a period of time that will last in different lengths for each of us. While we can’t know how long it will last (weeks or months or years), we can feel confident that we’ll emerge on the other side more awake, more deeply connected to love and our higher power, and more aligned. The dark night of the soul will make you question everything you’ve ever believed. It will shine a light on your ego and where you’re being inauthentic or denying the truth. It will be lonely at times, but keep going, keep receiving guidance from God/spirit/nature/the universe. Keep connecting deeper to your heart. You WILL come out on the other side and it will be more beautiful, more magical than you can even imagine.

5. Always come from love. People have ridiculed me and blamed me and made me into a perpetrator. But I know my truth. I have made every decision from a place of love and grace. And while I have made mistakes and not gotten everything right, I can sleep at night and stand strong and look in the mirror without regret because my intentions and actions have all come from a place of love and grace and empathy and forgiveness.

This is what the dark night of the soul teaches us as well – after we face our greatest fears and strip away all form-based elements of our 3D experience, we learn that love is all that remains. Love connects us all and is what we truly desire. And as cliché as it sounds, love and the connection to our divinity starts with truly loving all aspects of ourselves.

6. True friends are pure gold. I would not have made it through this year without my dear friends. I dropped my independent woman persona, asked for help, and let my friends in. This resulted in deeper friendships and a stronger sisterhood than I’ve ever had. I thank God for the women who have stood by my side every day.

7. Surrender. (Perhaps, the most important lesson of them all…)

I chose “surrender” as my word for 2024 as my heart sensed the transformation that was beginning to unfold in me.

At the beginning, I begged, pleaded, and prayed to not experience the feelings I was having. I got angry at God and the universe for my experience, knowing life would be so much easier if it weren’t so. And then I was invited to surrender, to trust there was a bigger plan at play, to remember that this was all happening FOR me, not TO me, to even consider that my soul chose this path before I was born.

I dialed up my spiritual practices and meditated more, journaled more, spent more time in nature, met with multiple therapists, consulted my akashic records, did shamanic journeys, addressed past life pain, listened, and received more. I came face to face with many of my deepest fears and each step of the way, I let Spirit lead, and learned that these fears were just facets of my ego that had to die.

Control is an illusion and the more I gripped on to a life and identity that were no longer in alignment for me, the more confused I felt and the more my body revolted, until I had no choice left but to surrender, to listen to that wise place within my heart, and to one day at a time take step by step on the path I was being guided.

While I experienced all this in 2024 and have grown a lot, I still have no idea what my 2025 will look like. My motto has been to live each day one at a time and just keep making the next best decision that feels aligned, and to see where this journey brings me.

If you sense a transformation like this happening in your life and you don’t want to go through it alone, please schedule a time for us to talk about my coaching services. I’d absolutely love to support you.

To your joy.

Your coach,

💜Sara

P.S. If you’re ready to up-level your work and home life and get support through any changes you’re going through, book a time for us to talk here to explore if me coaching you is a good fit for us.