When the Flame Burns From Within: A Sacred Interruption on the Healing Path

There are moments in healing that bring you to your knees. Not because you’re weak, but because your soul knows the ground is holy.

For the past few years, I’ve been actively reclaiming my wholeness and wellness, piece by piece, cell by cell, memory by memory.

I’ve been tending to my hormones. Nourishing my nervous system. Receiving IVs and vitamin shots. Meditating. Cold plunging. Sweating through sauna sessions. Softening. Choosing rest. Getting radically honest with myself. Letting go of long-held trauma, shame, and limiting beliefs I didn’t even know I still carried.

I truly thought I was doing everything “right.” I thought I was past the worst of it. But healing has its own timing. And it doesn’t follow checklists.

Instead, it moves in waves. It circles back. It interrupts.

And this time, it arrived in my mouth.

At first, I thought it was nothing, just a passing discomfort. Maybe stress. Maybe a food reaction. But within days, it became unbearable. My larynx ached. My tonsils bled. My tongue felt scorched. It was as if my throat had caught fire from the inside out. My ability to taste life disappeared completely. Speaking was painful. Eating became impossible. Every swallow reminded me that something sacred was being torn open.

This went on for seven weeks. In the final stretch, I was forced to rely solely on liquids for nourishment. I lost ten pounds in a single week. And while my body was crying out for help, the healthcare system failed me, four separate times I went to the ER and came back home with no real answers.

It wasn’t until I was finally admitted to the hospital, lying on a bed with the pain temporarily numbed, that something inside me whispered:

“This is not punishment. This is release.”

Because when pain shows up in the place where your truth lives — your mouth, your throat, your voice, it is never random.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve finally started speaking my truth. I’ve shared my story publicly. I’ve written openly about healing. I’ve begun to write again, words that became songs that had lived buried in my bones for decades.

And then, without warning, I was silenced.

At first, my first instinct was to fear it was some sort of punishment from the universe, that I had stepped out of line, spoken too loudly, dared too much. That I should learn my lesson and keep quiet, as I had done most of my life.

But as the silence settled in, something deeper began to reveal itself.

This wasn’t fear. It wasn’t shame. It wasn’t the universe scolding me.

It was something ancient rising through me, demanding stillness so I could finally listen without defense. So I could finally release what my body had been holding for far too long.

We often think of fire as destruction. But in many traditions, fire is purification.

And I now believe this burning wasn’t just a medical flare-up. It was a sacred interruption, a cleansing. A reckoning. A final expulsion of everything I had swallowed just to survive.

Maybe it was all the truths I never voiced. Maybe it was the anger I buried in order to keep the peace. Maybe it was the grief that had nowhere else to go. Maybe it was the stories passed down from the women who came before me, women who never got to speak.

Or maybe... it was my body’s way of saying: Never hide again.

Whatever it was, it demanded everything from me. And I gave in.

I let myself crumble. I let myself not be okay. I stopped pretending I was fine just because I had been “doing all the right things.” And in that rawness, in the unraveling, something deeper began to take root.

It didn’t feel like healing.

It felt like failing.

Like losing everything I’d worked so hard to rebuild since last July, when I first began pouring everything I had into my wellness.

But it wasn’t a setback. It was a portal.

It was my body’s way of saying, “Now that you're strong enough, we can clear this.”

Because healing isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it’s a wildfire, burning through illusions, scorched beliefs, outdated coping mechanisms, all the ways we’ve stayed small to stay safe.

This wasn’t a breakdown. This was a breakthrough.

And here’s what I know now, deep in my bones:

Healing is not linear. Sometimes it circles back with one last roar to make sure the wound has truly been emptied. Pain is not a mistake or a punishment, it’s a message. The body is fluent in metaphor. And sometimes the only way it can speak is through fire.

There is no shame in being brought to your knees. The ground beneath you is sacred.

Rest is not weakness. Slowness is not laziness. Silence is not absence. They are portals.

You can fall apart and still be wise. You can be raw and radiant at the same time.

So if you find yourself in the fire right now…If your voice has gone quiet, or your body is crying out in ways you don’t understand…If everything feels like it's unraveling…

Please hear me:

You are not broken. You are being remade. Not punished — purified. Not silenced — initiated.

And when you emerge from this — and you will — your voice will not just return. It will deepen. It will root into the truth of who you are. And it will carry with it the flame you thought might consume you.

Now, it warms you. Now, it lights the way.

I walked through this fire not to be destroyed……but to be reborn in it.

You may not yet feel the purpose of the pain you’re in, but one day, your body will soften again.

Your voice will rise.

Your truth will no longer tremble.

Until then, trust that this interruption has intelligence. Trust that your healing is unfolding in ways you can’t yet see.

Let your fire speak, purify you and heal you. 🕯