Dear Soul Searcher,
I’m writing this message to bring you context about how and why ‘Searching in Silence’ was born.
This is a window to my path so far.
When I look back, I realise I never quite fit into a box at any stage of my life. And that felt horrible. It felt like being different was bad. Something was wrong with me and I wasn’t good enough to deserve what others experienced.
At times I changed who I was just to fit in. While being a chameleon has its uses, I was changing at the expense of denying my authentic self. My biggest fear was;
If I reveal who I truly am, would I be rejected by everyone?
I realise now being different is what we all are. Some of us choose to step into it proudly and some of us aren’t ready to do so yet. That’s ok too. This is a journey. But those who do lead a life unique to them. They experience depth, purpose, compassion, self-love, and firm roots in the earth like never before. The rest float around lost until they die.
I’m not afraid to claim my place in the world anymore.
In 2013 I graduated from the University of Kent with a degree in Law. My intention was to become a well-respected and ruthless lawyer in the city (Harvey Specter was my idol back then as he was for many of us law students lol). I was focused on becoming successful at a huge firm. The need to feel important and to finally be feel seen and heard, was driving that ambition.
In other words, insecurity was influencing my vision of success.
A year before graduation I suffered a severe condition of eczema and hives which left my whole body wounded. I hadn’t really been sick before that so it was a real shock. Being 100 miles from my parents was difficult and though I had beautiful supportive friends around me, a range of emotions began to arise which were anything but easy to manage alone at 20.
Self-hate.
Anger.
Anxiety.
I was very frustrated but a deeper part of me knew this was also a part of my growth. I was about to be the first one in my family to have graduated in law and I wanted to make myself and my parents proud. This period in particular built a strong foundation of resilience within me. The intensity of the experience coupled with a difficult degree, fuelled the fire for me to persevere and finish what I’d started. I wanted to rise to the challenge.
This chapter was the beginning of an awakening as my old self was literally shedding each day. I began adopting a new perspective on life and questioning my beliefs about all things. Religion. Money, Career, Lifestyle.
All of the default ways of doing things no longer resonated.
In 2014 I went to law school and I quickly realised law wasn’t for me. I’d invested £14,000 to realise how I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life. Money I could get back, but time, I couldn’t. So, I quickly stopped pursuing that path. I took a part-time retail job whilst I pursued a number of businesses, hoping to find my million-dollar idea.
All of these ultimately failed.
Up to 2017 I was driven by financial freedom. I thought if I just had enough money, I could focus on enjoying my life. I soon realised money wasn’t what I wanted to pursue. Financial freedom was important, but it wasn’t the definition of success for me anymore. Money only came with a limited amount of excitement. I needed something much deeper to satisfy me. It was then I felt a call to swim deeper within myself to find out what it was.
Each day I repeated the affirmation, “I am in vibrational alignment with my purpose” with the hope that I’d be guided to the next step.
I began a podcast called Know Your Legacy. This connected me with many amazing people and it was the first project I’d started without the intention of making money, I simply enjoyed speaking with people. I wanted to spread wisdom and make some impact in the world.
One guest, in particular invited me to explore my emotions in a way I’d never done before.
He went on to become a mentor to me and helped me realise that throughout my whole life I’d experienced a range of emotions but I’d buried the uncomfortable ones. I knew it wasn’t healthy because I was numb to all the time. Happiness, sadness, laughter, pain – I couldn’t feel anything. Any emotion apart from rage was hard to genuinely experience. And that scared me.
In 2019 the Dark Night of The Soul unapologetically presented itself.
Now it was time to pause the busy and “productive” life I had created and reflect on everything that had happened up to that point. More importantly, how I felt about everything that had happened. Too often our feelings are ignored when pursuing life with such intensity. Thus, the painful reflection began;
Being bullied in school because of my foreign name built a solid foundation of self-hate and shame. Being told my participation in gymnastics was “feminine” and having people laugh at me furthered fuelled the fire. Doing dances at a community talent show had to be kept a secret. I wasn’t the regular kid into sports. I wasn’t the macho, forthcoming, confident, and loud class clown. And that made me feel like I was broken in some way.
Throughout school, I was shy and wasn’t confident enough to share my views with many people. How was it so easy for others to share their opinion? I felt as though what I had to say wasn’t significant or might be wrong and people would laugh.
Then came the way I looked because of my skin condition which gave rise to intense anxiety and piled on the self-hate. The mirror was my enemy. I couldn’t see eye to eye with myself for a long, long, long time.
Not knowing my passion and purpose and seeing everyone else ‘figuring it out’ led to a deep insecurity about who I was in the world. I had all this ambition and excitement for life, but nowhere to really direct it.
Thoughts of suicide swam in and out of my mind as I felt more and more out of place without in every way.
The list went on.
When lockdown hit in 2020, I began reflecting on all that I had journaled throughout my journey to that point. I naturally felt a book coming together. It grew organically from my heart. I wanted to gather all those emotions I uncovered and put them on pages. I wanted to share them all. I wanted to free myself from the burden of keeping them a secret and to let people know it was ok to feel everything that arises within you. To honour it all because that’s what it means to be human.
To deny any emotion is to deprive yourself of the full human experience.
I’m still on a journey of self-healing and self-love. I don’t have the best days every day. I still judge myself. The difference now is I am better able to accept my whole human experience as a spiritual quest for ascension and evolution. My purpose is to be of service by following the voice of my heart. And right now, it tells me to write these very words.
‘Searching in Silence’ is the search for self-acceptance – a journey of finding my way back to love.
Back to myself.
And back to all of you.
I don’t care about getting a big publishing deal or having my name on the #1 bestseller list. My only intention is to help you heal more deeply through my words. I want to help heal as many of you as I can so of course that means having a large amount of book sales. However, I only invite you to buy this book if your heart is calling you to do so. If you feel this book will help you then please purchase a copy and share with others you feel it will help heal.
One love,
V
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