The Year 2025 in Lessons

I’m sure many of you will agree that this has been a heavy, intense and difficult year… and there may be more colourful words that you would use 😉😂

But as it draws to an end (can I get a Hallelujah!), it’s a great time to reflect on the lessons that came and no doubt changed you for the better 😊

This is how I feel, and I want to share my story and encourage you to do the same, if not with others, then with a trusty journal. I started writing this year to do just that. My journal entries became blogs that I hoped could help others. I knew this year was life changing, and as I looked around I knew I wasn’t alone in that.

This will be the penultimate public blog, and I intend to expand on each of the themes I highlight today and more, on a new site with community features. The Blog Site will require a subscription, the proceeds of which will feed into Yashoda Yatra’s Organic Farming Project. This will fund more greenhouses and supplies as we aim to produce more organically-grown nutritious vegetables affordably to our local townships, empower more community partners, and continue to donate 25% of every harvest to children's homes and charities.

My intention is to create a community of like-minded individuals searching for truth and light in a world that too often, seems false and dark. I hope to inspire and be inspired, interacting with readers. Sometimes we can feel very alone on our journey and even through sacred isolation, I wanted to you to know that you are never alone! I hope this community can provide that for those that resonate with my messages.

We may be few, but we are doing the much needed inner work that deserves loving support, understanding and encouragement.

The stories I share will be more personal and may be triggering to some, yet I have no doubt that many of you are struggling with the same challenges. I know you have been walking through fire, getting burned, and rising once again. I know your ego has been crushed under the weight of suffering and you have found the strength to find the warmth of your soul.

Divine love has been my pillar of strength and I feel called to share that great blessing because how can I not? I feel like those divine forces carried me through so that I can help others 🙏🏽 and once you hear my story you will not believe that I am still standing, more balanced, more peaceful, more aligned and more powerful.

Maybe these themes will touch your heart in a way that you need to hear more about how I overcame them. Because these are themes we all face in this bitter sweet journey of incarnation.

Or maybe you will feel like you are reading your own story in someone else’s life. We hear that we are all connected. This will prove it to you.

Death

I am no stranger to death. I lost my dad when I was only 9 years old. That painful loss affected me on the deepest level and changed the way I looked at the world. I lost grandparents later also, the great elders of my family who helped raise me. I was able to face those losses and appreciate the beauty of their lives and pray for their soul’s journey.

During my career as a doctor I had to witness the death of many. As a paediatric surgeon, I had to accept the deaths of the most innocent, and it broke my heart every time knowing that I could not help them. Nevertheless I developed a strength that forced me to explore my own beliefs about death and my role as a doctor, beginning to understand it from a higher perspective. I thought I had mastered grief. It was an arrogant assumption, because I wasn’t done learning.

Enter 2025.

I lost not one, not two, but three close family members this year. One of them was my age, and was so tragic, it broke my normally composed nature into pieces when I saw his lifeless body. It just seemed so unfair. I had to search within myself and in prayer to understand that his soul’s journey was not for us to comprehend or control.

Senseless tragedy

Imagine the purest soul in your life, a child with a heart of gold, having to go through one of the most difficult challenges any person could live through.

I am tearing up just thinking about it.

Some tragedies force us to question God’s Will like we never have before. But we witnessed this angel display otherworldly courage and resilience. Is God’s hand not on this child? What lessons did the divine hand point us to? She awakened our family’s heart, as we rallied around her and her light was too bright to keep us in our own darkness.

It’s our faith that enlightens us, and grows the inexplicable strength that you can find in these times, to provide compassionate support and unconditional love to everyone sharing the pain of sudden tragedy.

Burnout

My career as a paediatric surgeon was set in stone. I entered the year, never questioning my choice of path. I saw it as my seva (service to humanity). I loved my job. I loved the kids. I loved helping them even if I lost sleep and spent all the energy I had, it was worth it.

But the weight of the stress applied by a failing health system and work politics increasing limitations on those working hard to provide this essential service, turned the dream into a nightmare.

Even with these constraints, I was prepared to go the extra mile and do what I could with what was provided. That is what I had done for 7 years… burning out, healing and going back to the grind.

Only this time, I had learned too much, about myself, my distorted sense of self worth, my need for validation through selflessness and the need to feel needed. My passion for healing myself from my own pain, on my journey with endometriosis, had brought me to an understanding of healing that aligned with spiritual truth and I saw that I was denying myself the healing my body was screaming for.

Three months into this crazy year, I chose myself, and I left the job that defined me for so long. The part of my identity that gained admiration and support, that made me a noble good person in society. But I was done being a matyr. I was ready to discover who I was without the label.

Now I see that decision as divine timing. Because what the year later brought me, required all the strength I could muster, some of which I have already described. But there was more.

Uncovering truth, exposure of covert vulnerable narcissism

After I left work, my attention was supposed to return to myself. Instead, I had family tragedies to be present for, and something I didn’t see coming, the truth of my seemingly perfect marriage being revealed.

Being home, turned my attention to my relationship. Newly wed and high on the wedding aftermath lasted until mid year. Thereafter, truth started to expose the nagging intuitions over years, that I chose to overlook for love’s sake.

My husband wasn’t the person I thought he was. And when patterns emerged, I shared these insights with him and even wrote a blog about it! (Navigating Shadows and Light: Insights on Self-Worth, Narcissism, and Spiritual Growth).

The patterns repeated despite my best efforts to navigate them.

Synchronistically, I watched as other toxic relationship dynamics were exposed around me, and it became clear that a collective awakening was underway. I believe there was even a tik tok trend about this all around the world.

Almost out of the textbook, my husband went through each phase of narcissistic abuse ending in a discard of me and the marriage as if it had never been real. It was shocking but I recognised the playbook after researching extensively, and praying, asking for divine support and clarity.

When I asserted my boundaries, and refused to be manipulated, he did the expected and fled the scene like a thief being caught. I implored him to stay to work through his shadow and heal together but to no avail. I had to accept that he was not ready or willing to work on it. A lesson on my need to control another’s healing journey, to help them even if they refused. I was attaching my own self worth to his healing. The wounded healer shadow revealed itself.

I still felt the loss and grieved, not for the person but for the illusion I had long accepted to be true. I grieved for my naïveté and idealism.

But he had initiated me on a journey finally to my true self. The shadow that had eluded me as a wounded empath. That still allowed manipulation in sacrifice of boundaries. In still seeking validation outside myself and not facing the fear of abandonment.

I will delve much more into this journey, psychologically and spiritually, how I have found my power that was there all along. The light that refused to be dimmed any longer, and now shines brightly through no one but myself and the divine.

However, all is not lost for the poor souls with this affliction, because I watched another self proclaimed narcissist in my life, mirror my journey of facing his shadow with courage and determination. He is an inspiration to the collective, because a narcissist healing is an exception to the rule. A testament to the power of the soul, and turning to God in your darkest hour. There can only be light.

These are the themes I want to explore and more importantly, how we can grow and heal and find our true selves with grace and strength through all of it.

If you resonate with any of these themes: dealing with death, finding meaning in senseless tragedy, navigating the patterns of burn out, listening to your body and pain as a wake up call, recognising and overcoming narcissistic abuse, integrating the shadow… join me as I share the full story and emerging insights and invite you to share yours in a safe place I am creating.

The tools and processes I have been through found me as I opened up to my intuition, and followed divine guidance. I applied esoteric knowledge to my experiences, and I would love to share these insights in a community yearning for a soul tribe.

Look out for my New Year Message Blog on my social links below, where you will find the invitation to join me in community and soul tribe. Accompany me on my Yatra, delving into the divine plan to create and serve with unconditional love and compassion, and most importantly now with wisdom 🙏🏽

Your friend and fellow warrior,

Yashoda.