Lessons Learned From Darkness Paved The Way Towards The Light

In this deeply personal episode, I take you inside a pivotal chapter of my healing journey—the final stretch of darkness before I stepped into the light. I reflect on the emotional and spiritual transformation that occurred after years of navigating trauma, abuse, and inner turmoil. I share the raw truths of what it really took to emerge from that darkness and how radical acceptance, patience, and emotional regulation shaped my path to peace.

You’ll hear about the moment I finally released control, the spiritual awakening that affirmed my worth, and how I discovered my divine assignment. This isn’t just about survival—it’s about alchemy: transforming pain into power, fear into faith, and chaos into clarity. Whether you're in the thick of your own struggle or reflecting on how far you've come, I hope this episode meets you right where you are and reminds you that healing is possible.

Episode Highlights:

[0:02] - Reflecting on the three-year divorce period and the simultaneous healing journey.
[1:10] - Lessons on releasing control—especially around people and outcomes.
[3:05] - Developing patience by surrendering to divine timing.
[5:00] - Navigating emotional dysregulation and reclaiming peace.
[6:25] - Discovering the power of radical acceptance.
[8:40] - Feeling unworthy and receiving divine reassurance.
[10:30] - Awakening to spiritual gifts and recognizing a life purpose.
[12:20] - Confronting inner wounds with courage and persistence.
[14:15] - Releasing fear, embracing joy, and reclaiming self-love.
[15:55] - Becoming a master manifester and aligning with a higher vibration.
[17:10] - Expressing gratitude for the pain and the growth it brought.

Links & Resources: 

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Transcript

Caryn Portnoy: 0:02

Hi everyone, and welcome to the music of Life. I'm your host. Karen Portnoy, before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. You I spoke in earlier episodes about being in hell during the three years of my divorce while my ex husband, my daughter and I all live together, and I spoke of the intense healing journey that I went through at the same time during the divorce. So if we were living together for three years, my healing journey was about two and a half years during that time. So I was healing at the same time I was being abused. There were so many great things that came out of my healing journey, but three of the major things that I spoke about had to do with releasing control, patience and regulating my emotions. All three of those were huge lessons for me during the divorce, but I've had a new perspective recently that I wanted to talk about in this episode, and what it really took to emerge from the darkness. So when I talk about releasing control, my ex husband was not a good leader in the marriage at all, which pushed me to be more controlling of things going on in my daughter's life, things going on in the household, things just happening in our life, all those things. So I had to release control over those things. And then I also had to release control over attachments to outcomes, which, you know, I was spiraling so much during that time. And this was all designed that way. He was on a very massive quest to dis regulate me on every possible level. So I would, I would hope, I would expect, I would anticipate certain outcomes based on my behavior, his behavior, and my daughter's behavior and what I learned about releasing control is that I really had to give up my attachment to outcomes, which is part of releasing control. And that was extremely hard to do, but it was it took on a new level once I was once I felt myself coming out of hell. Patience was such a big one too. But you know, once I started leaning more on God and praying and meditating more regularly and consistently and all of that, it became easier for me to surrender to patience, because, you know, we're so conditioned to to rely on time. I mean, it dictates our entire lives, from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed and and everything in between, everything seems to be dictated by time. So to release that to God and just trust and have faith in the fact that things happen when they're supposed to never too early and never too late. It it really takes the pressure off of the pressure cooker of time. Obviously, when you have appointments and you have things that you need to do at specific times. You have to adhere to those but you know, the the gaps of time in between, those are where we fixate sometimes and when we stop and think about how much we actually sit in impatience. It really does bring a lot of stress and anxiety to our lives. So learning patience was was huge, but especially during my spiritual journey, especially because there was a big, big boulder on my shoulders that I was able to get rid of by giving it over to God and and then my life just got easier over time. It wasn't overnight, but there was definitely a sense of ease when I could relax into things happening when they're supposed to, and then regulating my emotions. I mean, like I just said, you know, my ex husband worked tirelessly to keep me dysregulated. And you know, he would, he would cause discussions or conversations and, and I'm not talking about long conversations, because he never had those, but I'm talking about anything to stir the pot with me. And. And he would keep escalating it and escalating it until I reacted. And then once he got the reaction, he was working so hard for he could then turn around and say, look at her. Look how crazy she is. Never once taking accountability for all it took for him to get me there. He focused on the fact that I was crazy or spiraled out of control. So anyway, when I came out of the darkness, another thing that was kind of a revelation to me was how radical acceptance was needed. And I never really thought of it this way before. But, you know, in accepting the things we can't control, it's huge. You know, I kept hearing and reading and noticing this theme that kept going over and over and over, about we can't control other people. We can only control our response to it. And that was huge in my grasping the concept of radical acceptance, because the more we can accept without judgment, which is also very hard in our culture and society, the easier life gets, and the easier it is to see other people in their strengths, in their weaknesses and their flaws. You know, all the things that that we assess other people about, so radical acceptance was really a major factor for me, and it's one that I still practice all the time, which has helped me be less of a judgmental person. I don't see myself as a judgmental person anymore at all, and I've said over and over again that it's not my job to judge other people. It's God's job. And once again, it's, it's a big weight off my shoulders, because I don't want to judge other people because they're judging me. So you know, we, like I've said, again, with the law of attraction, we attract what we are, and if we're judgmental to others, we know other people are judging us. And again, something we can't control, but I've built up enough resilience and strength and, you know, releasing control that I don't care what other people think of me or say about me or judge me for and and that's that's a huge thing, because I feel an armor of protection and like a bubble that nobody can penetrate me, because I have a very strong sense of who I am and what I stand for and how I live my life and what my values are, and all of those things, but I radically accept other people for who they are, too. That doesn't mean I don't get frustrated at times and and, you know, I am human, and I do, you know, quote, unquote, fall off the wagon sometimes, but what I have mastered is putting myself back on track again. And I think as a human, that's more important than the fact that we fall off track with anything. I so as I was embarking on my healing journey, there was a new level of darkness that I experienced, like a leveled up version of darkness before I could emerge into the light. I was waiting in the muck of what I had just pulled myself out of, and it felt like tar just holding me back and pulling me back. And, I mean, imagine walking through tar. It's nearly impossible. It was heavy, sticky, restrictive, not knowing what was coming next, the unknown, the abyss. And as I cried out to God for help, what did he have in store for me? What did he want me to do? What did he expect from me? I was crying about worthiness to God for so many months during prayer, I just every single time I prayed, I was crying relentlessly for many, many, many months, and towards the end of the two and a half years, I was getting to the point where I was saying that I didn't feel worthy of you God, and that's why I felt like I was crying. And what I got in my intuition, that's typically how God speaks to me. Is in my my gut, you know, my intuition, immediately as I asked that question, you know, dating that I don't feel worthy of Him, immediately after he said, You are my child, of course, you are worthy. And of course, that made me cry more. But in time, feeling worthy started to grow a lot, until almost a year later, not only do I feel worthy, I feel what my mission and purpose is for my life, I feel chosen, very intentional. I understand my assignment in my life, and I don't take it lightly. Me at all. I don't play when it comes to God. And what I've learned is that I have certain spiritual gifts that were bestowed upon me. And what I've learned about these gifts is that I tend to awaken people. I make them feel something that they didn't feel before interacting with me. I inspire them to face themselves in some kind of way. I create a safe space for people to remove their masks and just be themselves. I inspire people to elevate in their own lives, and I don't do it intentionally. Just by being authentically me. I mirror back to them about being authentically themselves. I'm not even aware of it at the time, but in retrospect, I see their growth and their progress as a result, but I see how I can make the world a more loving, more elevated, happier place, and by waking up to my own spiritual gifts, wisdom and power, it all starts with my being myself too. I came face to face with myself to my core, and that was not a fun journey at all. It was hard. It was painful at times. I cried a lot, but I kept going forward. I stared my wounds, traumas and darkness right in its face. And I never backed down. And I never saw so much determination, fortitude, strength. I've never seen any of that so power, more powerful than I ever have in my life, I dug in to ask the tough questions, and was willing to stand firm and hear the answers, which takes a lot of courage. It's really hard to do that, and little by little, my strength grew, my knowledge and wisdom expanded, my confidence and power increased, and suddenly, peace took over and fear subsided. Doubts and worries were turned over to God, I finally had space for joy, happiness and love for myself first and then for others. I my therapist told me about this years ago, we have to follow the airline safety protocols to really find true happiness. We have to take care of ourselves first before we can help others. So in putting our oxygen mask on first and taking care of ourselves and and our own mental health and our own physical health and our own spiritual health and emotional health and all of that, we have to take care of ourselves first before we can help others. And the law of attraction states that we attract what we are, so when we are healed. And I've said this before, we are never 100% healed, ever, but we heal as much as we possibly can by ourselves, and the rest is done through relationship to others, whether it's romantic, whether it's familial, whether it's community co workers, any of that relationships to other people are would help really heal us. So as lightness emerged security within myself, love and pride for my growth and transformation, transmuting such great pain into such great power. And when I say power, I don't mean like power to use against other people. That's not what I mean. It's just strength in who I am and owning that and embodying it, alchemizing, limiting thought patterns, belief systems, attitudes, old ideas lack mentalities and anything that no longer served me for new ideas, new perspectives, new attitudes, new belief systems, and how important it is to speak positivity into your life rather than negativity. For anybody out there who's into manifesting, and I've actually become a master manifester over the all this time. But you know, our thoughts create our reality. So it's it's really important to think about what we think about, because energy becomes thoughts, and thoughts become reality. So if our energy is negative and we think negative thoughts, we're going to have a negative reality. I mean, that's kind of common sense. Conversely, if our energy is positive and we think positively, our reality will be positive. So I just implore anybody to. Who is aware of these things to really pay attention to the thoughts and your energy, because that's a sure way of seeing how your reality is going to play out. Anyway, when I think about this whole journey and where I am now versus where I was. I really can't take credit for any of this for myself, because God was such an important role in my getting from there to here, and really and truly, I feel like we co created my reality now, if left on my own, I don't know where I would have been, I probably still would have been in hell, and my divorce wouldn't have ended a year ago, and who knows what else. So as I continue moving forward and my life continues to get better, I see what is coming down the road based on what I've been manifesting for myself, and it's blue skies ahead. I've really gone through so much shit for most of my life, and I'm happy to feel finally like peace is with me and that my dreams can actually come true, and I'm working hard to move the needle in that direction and and very focused and very determined at making my dreams come true. So looking back at all the pain, all the suffering, all the horror that I had to deal with through my divorce, I am very much full of gratitude for all of it and all of the lessons I learned and had to learn for my own survival to get to where I am right now. So I hope that whatever I've said in this episode is something to think about. I hope I can inspire people to really kind of reconsider their own inner work and their own inner journey towards healing. But I do believe that people really need to hear that other people are inspired and going through changes as well. So thank you for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Please join me every Thursday for a new episode. You can reach my website@podpage.com slash the music of life. Feel free to leave your email address. You can also leave a voicemail and share any kinds of stories or experiences or anything that you'd like to talk about. I promise I will keep you anonymous, but I assure you that whatever experiences or stories you leave for me, you are not alone, and I would love to share that with other people who are also going through similar things. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you in the next episode. You.