Radiating Now Your Life PUrpose is a journey Vol 1;5
What if purpose isn’t about what you do, but about what kind of world you choose to create, every day, with your being?
Sometimes, the world tells us that our “life purpose” is a destination—a final role, cause, or mountaintop we’re meant to reach. We think often in milestones like graduating college, law degrees, marriages or divorces. As if we get there to this place and we just 'are done.
For me, my journey towards my life purpose will never truly be an ending. I know that is true for those I have the honor of serving. We are shaping our life purpose in the shifts of our minds. It’s about living in a reality where you are in your life purpose - right now. It’s an intentional surrender. A divine surrendering.
There have been times where I thought, “how can this help me in my purpose? What purpose does this loss or pain bring?” Yet, I know each time I feel these fallings, I rise higher in my purpose as a healer, advocate, mother, daughter and friend.
A client recently reminded me of this. She came to me having left a high-profile career, her self-worth bruised from a toxic marriage and a few years of surviving one hardship after another. Amidst all her rebuilding, she confessed her greatest desire was to find her joy and her purpose. She wanted to reclaim her voice. As she spoke, I saw my own story reflected back to me. And, we began to explore where she was resisting her desires and what scared her about truly having that joy.
As we spoke in our sessions, I remembered 2018, a year that cracked me wide open to the point I literally could not breath in or out without pain in my chest. I was pushed out of my own nonprofit—the safe home for trafficking survivors I had poured my soul into, my first true vision brought to life with a team I loved. That same day, my partner of three years left—ending a journey marked by his dishonesty and betrayal. Suddenly, my identity as a leader and a lover was unmoored. Who was I if I could no longer call myself “founder” or “life partner,” if the things I had built and sacrificed for evaporated in a season of loss?
If you’ve ever felt that way too, let me tell you: you are not alone, and you are not failing. In fact, as I began to grieve, I started to discover something radical. My life coach saw me in my confusion and pain; with gentle questions and tough truths about my own ways of thinking, she invited me to see that my purpose might be waiting underneath the roles and relationships I’d lost. With her facilitation and guidance, I started to ask myself:
What if purpose isn’t about what you do, but about what kind of world you choose to create, every day, with your being?
Esther Perel’s wisdom kept echoing: “The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” Some of my deepest pain came not just from lost work, but from the struggle to love and be loved in a world where suffering can be invisible or disbelieved. I found myself advocating with and for young women who were arrested for “crimes” that were really traumas—girls who had been trafficked, exploited, and left to bear it alone. Their resilience struck me. I knew there was more I could offer than just outrage. I wanted to uplift not just their cause, but the joy and possibility of who they could become. In essence, we defied realities to change laws and reclaim freedom, one survivor at a time.
From there, my book Believe Me began to take shape, and my work with survivors of image-based sexual abuse started to blossom. Each new door opened—not because I planned it all, but because, time and again, life cracked me open and I said yes to my own evolving path.
Esteemed Jungian teacher James Hollis writes, “The task is not to find meaning, but to bring meaning to life.” Jung would say that our wholeness expands with every embrace of both shadow and light. And, in my healing work, I found that my reality could shift only when I shifted: by examining my thoughts, patterns, and the stories I still told myself about what was possible, about who I had to be vs who I was ever becoming.
Neuroscientist and leading meditation coach Joe Dispenza has down in his research that we truly can rewire our minds, changing not just our thoughts but our entire experience of reality. If I told myself repeatedly that pain meant I was lost, I stayed lost. If I saw pain as a teacher—as the birthplace of empathy, creativity, and a new kind of power—then pain became part of the alchemy that turned wounds into wisdom.
None of this is to say I now float above grief or frustration. Only recently, I ended a relationship with someone I truly loved, and I let myself weep and grieve—often at home and sometimes in cafes with my journal. Grief is part of life; it burns away the illusions and brings us back, again and again, to the surrendering of the stories we told ourselves were ours to carry when in fact their weight was pulling us back from our purpose.
These are the truths I offer my clients, and which I keep discovering for myself:
1. You are allowed to redefine purpose as many times as you need.
Each season—whether it’s advocacy, writing, coaching, or simply listening to a friend—can be meaningful. There is no one role, no single cause that defines your soul.
2. Your mind is the garden for your reality.
The first step in reclaiming your purpose is to notice the thoughts you water—and then to practice choosing new ones. Are you speaking possibility to yourself? Are you showing yourself the grace you easily give others? Are you opening to the fullest possibilities of your reality? What scares you if you actually reach your dreams?
3. Purpose grows in community, and in courage.
There is something sacred about gathering with others who have walked through darkness and are learning to sing again. My client is now training as a therapist, others have become advocates, some have found gentleness in rest. Your path is yours, but our stories braid together into something far stronger than what we can make alone.
Radiate Purpose exists so we can hold, uplift, and help each other remember:
Your life purpose is not just a job or a label. It is the force within you that keeps calling you forward, no matter how many times life asks you to surrender and begin again.
If you are ready to explore what’s next for you—or just to remember that you are already on your way—I am here, and so is this community. Your story matters. Your dreams are not too much.
-Andrea
