Why do illnesses come?

The answer is simple: to finally push us to where we’re meant to be — to meet the people we’re supposed to meet, and ultimately to become who we’re supposed to be there. It took me a long time to understand this in my own life: that a completely different mindset is needed to get out of an illness than the one that led me into it.

All that’s really being asked of us is to move from where we are. From a job that doesn’t fulfill us. From a relationship that drags us down. From a place of living where we no longer feel good. And so on.

If we suppress symptoms with pills but don’t make the necessary changes — staying in the same place — the symptoms worsen. Our health worsens. What started as a small problem becomes huge in a few years. One problem suppressed or unresolved turns into three more.

Until we start making the changes that our illnesses are asking of us, we’ll stay ill. It’s really that simple to understand. Every single person on this planet is unique and needs to find their own way. Each of us is led down a different path, and each has a different road to healing.

What helped me at the beginning might help you at the end, or not at all. First, we need to take responsibility for our health into our own hands. Second, we need to learn to quiet ourselves so we can hear our inner voice, our intuition, which is always speaking to us — but we often don’t hear it.

Why? Because it whispers. It speaks very softly. We don’t hear it because we don’t live in our hearts; we live in our heads, where it’s loud. It’s hard to be still for a moment because that’s when all the long-suppressed emotions begin to surface. That’s why we love watching TV, always listening to music, and so on — we’re trying to drown it out.

But in silence lie all the answers to all our questions.

When our “bogeymen” start coming out in the silence — all the fears, anger, sadness, hatred, everything we’ve carried inside us, most often from childhood — we need to learn to work with them. To accept them and heal them within ourselves.

In my life, I managed to do this in different ways, and therapy played a big role. But I also had to make many changes that were being asked of me. I took them one by one because I wanted to be healthy.

Your illness also came to help you, not to harm you or destroy you. Your soul could no longer watch you heading for ruin. It stopped you through illness, preventing you from something much worse that could have happened. Even if you feel this is the worst thing that could have happened to you.

Only when a person fully heals can they, from that state of awareness, understand that the worst thing that ever happened to them was also the best. They see the progress it brought them and who they became because of it.

Along this healing journey, you meet the people who are meant to fill that chapter of your story. But this is experienced only by a courageous person who steps out of their comfort zone and faces their fears head-on. They enter the dark cave of their soul and don’t leave until they find the light.

That light is within each of us. We are that light.