What Was Waiting on the Other Side

If you haven't read Part 1, The Door Desperation Led Me To, I recommend starting there. While each blog can stand on its own, they're meant to be read together.

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After losing Samie and then TJ I made a decision.

Not a dramatic one. Not a moment with music swelling in the background. Just a quiet internal shift from going through the motions to actually choosing to be here. To fight for myself in a way I hadn't fully committed to before.

That decision didn't change everything overnight. But it changed the direction I was facing.

And it was in that renewed commitment that I came across a flyer in the lobby of the methadone center sometime around 2018.

A paid study. Meditation for chronic pain.

My first thought was something close to: that's not going to work.

I kept walking.

Then I saw it again on a particularly bad day. And something shifted. Not enthusiasm exactly. More like exhaustion meeting curiosity. The inner critic said it was nonsense. But there was another quieter voice that said — at this point, what have you got to lose?

So I said yes. For the money because I hadn't been able to work. For the phone they were offering participants. And underneath all of it, because the pain had become desperate enough that I was willing to try something I never would have chosen otherwise.

That study was called the MORE study. And I will never forget it.

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I went in believing that the physical world was all there was. That you couldn't feel something without nerves to feel it. That meditation was probably just something people did to feel like they were doing something.

Then something happened in that room that I wasn't prepared for.

We were guided through a practice — breathing, and then simply noticing whether the energy around us felt close to our body or extended a little further out. For the first few sessions it felt like nothing. Like it was all just very close in and very quiet.

But then they would ask about our pain levels before and after each session.

And one day the number went down.

Even by one point it was enough. Enough to make me think — okay. Whatever this is, I'll keep showing up.

At the time I didn't have language for what I was experiencing. I just knew something was shifting that I couldn't entirely explain. And I was willing to keep showing up to find out what it was.

What I didn't understand yet was that the study was doing something much deeper than I realized. It was rewiring the way my brain processed pain and reward. It was giving me a framework for reframing my experience that I would go on to build from for years. That reframe quietly changed the course of my life.

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Over time they introduced body scan meditations.

What the body scan gave me wasn't just awareness of the pain — it gave me a new relationship with it. I wasn't just feeling it anymore. I could find it. I could locate it specifically. I could visualize it. And when I visualized it dissolving, it lessened. Over time, during meditation at least, it would eventually go.

That felt like nothing short of remarkable to me.

My doctor had told me the surgery had fixed the lower spine problem. That whatever pain remained must be in my head.

But it wasn't just in my head — and it wasn't just in my body either. It was in both. The pain lived in the fascia and the nerves and the cells. It was years of mental and emotional experience stored in the body because I hadn't had a way to release it. And in order to release it I had to use my mind and my body together. Not one or the other. Both.

Meditation opened that door. Reiki deepened it. But the lasting relief came from all of it working together — and from loving myself enough to build the physical and mental routines that supported me even when it hurt to try.

Moving when movement causes pain is a paradox. I know that firsthand. The first victory wasn't getting to the store. It was getting out of bed. Getting down the stairs. Then eventually out the door. Then slowly, over time — walking. Yoga. Over the course of a few years I went from being bedridden to going months without pain. Then years.

Healing wasn't about finding one thing that fixed me. It was about learning that every part of me deserved attention, compassion, and care. The physical body. The mental and emotional body. The spiritual body. None of them healed in isolation. They healed together. And it was the connection between all three — and the intention I started bringing to all three — that led me to where I am now.

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As the pain began to ease something else started to happen.

The noise got quieter. And in the quiet I started to hear things I hadn't been willing to hear before.

The first thing I noticed was how cruel I was to myself. The voice in my head — the one that had been running constantly — was saying things to me that I wouldn't have accepted from anyone else. It was abusive in a way I hadn't had language for until I learned about the inner critic.

But underneath that voice there was something else.

A little girl who just wanted to be loved. Protected. Nurtured.

And that's when I started to meet the aspects of myself I had been suppressing — not because they were bad but because I had learned they weren't safe to express. They had been created as byproducts of experiences I'd had. And in order to integrate them, accept them, and eventually love them I had to first create that safety within myself. I had to become the one who provided what I had been looking for from the outside.

That was the real work of the solitude.

I also started noticing how much was shifting in me. Things I had been fine with before no longer interested me. People, places, things that had once felt familiar now felt like they belonged to someone else's life. Not because they lacked value. But because I was coming back to something older. Something more mine. I was becoming okay with the silence. Okay with being alone with myself. Okay with choosing what I actually wanted rather than what I thought was expected of me.

The best way I can describe what that felt like is this: the most vivid color I knew back then came when I was using or drinking. There was a feeling of release, a freedom — even if it came with a cost. An excuse to be reckless and to let go of the weight I was carrying, even temporarily.

So when I say color came back, I mean something different. It came back on its own terms. Without the cost attached. Slowly. In bits and pieces. Wonder started returning.

That second homecoming was the best surprise of my life.

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Looking back I no longer see any of it as coincidence.

The clinic I almost didn't walk into. The flyer I almost didn't pick up. The study I almost dismissed. The voice that kept saying — at this point, what have you got to lose?

I think it was a combination of things — nudges I was willing to follow, chances I was desperate enough to take, and my higher self and guides presenting opportunities and opening doors that I still had to choose to walk through. The version of me that exists beyond the conditioning of worldly experience quietly pointing the way.

The inner critic said it was nonsense.

The other voice said say yes anyway.

And somewhere in the gap between those two voices was every choice that led me here.

I started this journey asking what's the worst that could happen.

Looking back now I find myself asking a different question.

What else might become possible if I keep saying yes to my own healing?

Because I don't think healing came from one decision. One meditation. One Reiki session. One new routine.

It came from learning that every part of me needed attention.

My body.

My mind.

My emotions.

My spirit.

None of them healed in isolation.

They healed together.

And every time I chose to take one more small step — even when I couldn't see where it would lead — I was slowly learning to choose myself too.

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Author's Note

If any part of this resonated — whether you're in recovery, rebuilding, learning to be alone with yourself, or just in a season that feels like greyscale — you're not alone in it.

If you're struggling with addiction or mental health and don't yet have professional support, I'd gently encourage you to look into what's available to you. That support made a difference in my life that I can't overstate.

I hope this encourages you to look at the next door in front of you with a little more curiosity than fear.

With love,
— Hadija (Higher Heart Warrior Channel)