You Don’t Have to Burn Your Entire Life Down to Have a Radical Transformation

Our inner life is where the real changes happen.

I threatened my husband I was going to go live in a nunnery.

Honestly, I didn’t mean it — I had two young children. I was going nowhere.

But the words: overwhelmed, frustrated, lost, confused—they didn’t get his attention. They didn’t express how desperate I was for transformation. Not just your run-of-the-mill transformation, but your caterpillar-to-butterfly, lead-into-gold transformation.

I was in my early thirties, and I’d recently discovered yoga. That seemingly innocuous discovery led to a wholesale reawakening of my curiosity, which had gone dormant for years as I’d tried to suppress myself to fit into society’s prescribed boxes.

My newly-awakened curiosity opened all the previously-locked doors. I could finally question spirituality on my own terms.

I didn’t choose a nunnery because I was a Christian. In fact, this was at a time in my life when I was questioning my relationship with Christianity—which had been touch-and-go my entire life. I would even leave Christianity altogether in just a couple more years.

I chose a nunnery, I think, because in my mind it represented the opportunity to focus entirely on my spiritual growth. I could read all the books, study all the teachers, meditate all the time. I wouldn’t have to do the dishes, take out the garbage, and figure out what to make for dinner—again.

Confusion, Displacement, & Frustration

Back then, I was reading everything I could get my hands on, all at the same time. Dog-eared New Age books by Eckhart Tolle, Anodea Judith, Judith Lasater, and B. K. S. Iyengar mingled on my nightstand with books by Christian mystical authors such as St. Teresa of Avila, Thomas Merton, John of the Cross, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and the Bible. The problem was, I wanted them all to be correct, but they contradicted one another.

Was there a hell or wasn’t there? Was reincarnation real or not? Did God love us unconditionally, or did a jealous God set strict conditions?

I needed to know. And the only way I could know was to have uninterrupted time studying and figuring it out for myself.

Where was the unopposable truth—what I called the “Great Truth”—that I could cling to for the rest of my life?

If only I could sort through all the books, teachers, and wisdom and get to the Great Truth, I thought, I could finally be the face that belongs on the cover of a “Yoga Journal” magazine.

I wanted to trade my life in for one of study and reflection until I made it to the top: enlightenment. I didn’t want my studies to be interrupted by the usual responsibilities of family. I was so hungry for change, and I believed I had to devote every second of every day to it.

It wasn’t just the nunnery, either. During these turbulent years, each time I traveled to attend a yoga workshop, training, or retreat, I’d dread the coming home part and the realization that I had to do laundry again.

Yes, I missed my family, but how much easier would it be, I thought, to not have the responsibilities of homeownership? To just sit and meditate on the beaches of Costa Rica or play with the elephants in Thailand?

I couldn’t focus entirely on my growth while raising two “spirited” and strong-willed girls. I couldn’t do it in yoga class, where we all pretended we were already in a place of peace and light. And I couldn’t do it with a husband who wasn’t at all interested in matters of spirituality but was instead interested in regular sex.

Back then, I found sex to be a complete distraction from my more lofty goals—I didn’t want to waste that second chakra/kundalini (spiritual awakening)energy!

Since you’re thinking it anyway, let me just go and admit that you’re right: I’m not an easy woman to be married to.

But back then, I needed my husband to forget about my body for a while and help me figure out my mind. But I rammed into a wall that he magically erected anytime something “spiritual” came out of my mouth.

And so, I told him I wanted to go to a nunnery. I see now that this was me asking for help before I knew how to ask for help.

Because again, I didn’t want to join a nunnery.

I wasn’t thinking, I never again want to go to a restaurant again in jeans and a t-shirt, sipping coffee or a glass of wine.

I wasn’t thinking, I’d look good in a habit.

I just thought, I want the change and transformation the spiritual life promises.

I wanted a life rooted in wisdom. I wanted the comfort of knowing who I was—and the comfort of steady routines. I wanted to live authentically. And I didn’t want to wait for it.

Creating the Inner Change

It’s hard for me to put into words the incredible confusion of those times. All I know is it was simultaneously confining and purposeless. It was like being a tumbleweed in a desert — directionless, empty, alone, unable to stop. But also, being weighed down by a rock pressing on my chest.

And the answer, I believed, was what the spiritual communities promised: Enlightenment. Freedom. Bliss. Contentment.

I’d been practicing for a whole two years and didn’t have them yet. If anything, I was more unwound and unstable than before, because every question I asked led to more questions opening up inside me.

I thought the only way I could get it was by burning my life down and starting over from scratch.

Desperate times, desperate measures.

I’m writing this today because I doubt that I’m alone. Maybe with the nunnery part, but how many of us, in search of a transformation, seek to burn down our outer lives instead of really doing the inner work?

People walk away from their marriages, their jobs, their lifestyle—believing and hoping that the outer change will magically create the inner change.

I’m here to say it doesn’t work that way. I didn’t leave my family and join a nunnery back then.

Instead, I got sick and ended up being forced into making the kinds of changes in my life I was avoiding: slowing down my work schedule, getting help for my anxiety and depression, and going to marriage counseling to remember why we chose each other in the beginning.

This inner work could’ve still led to me joining a nunnery—the nunnery is not the problem in this story. And sometimes, we really do need to burn our lives down and start over. But if our dramatic outer change isn’t fomented from inner reflection, it is simply a reaction, not a response. It’s impulsive, not an action moved by wisdom. A knee-jerk attempt at a solution, not a mindful choice.

True transformation is the outflow of greater alignment from within — a true Yang emerging from its Yin, just as in the Shiva Lingam (see photo).

We might still have the same job, but how we engage with the work changes. We may still be married, but how we communicate with our spouses will change.

“Wherever you go, there you are,” is the quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn from the book of the same name.

We have lessons to learn and it’s actually easier to learn them in the place where we stand, in the circumstances we have already created for ourselves, rather than building new circumstances and believing that we’ve transformed. We have not. We have only relocated.

Some 20-odd years later, I’m still married to the same man, and my kids are grown. I’ve never joined a nunnery, and I’ve always come home from my retreats.

But who I am inside is completely transformed from who I was then. How I engage with others—how I relate to myself—has transformed. I know now how to ask for help without taking it to extremes.

Myanmar Pilgrimage

A handful of years ago, I traveled to Myanmar for a three-week solo pilgrimage. I visited many sacred sites, monasteries, villages, and yes, also a nunnery.

I enjoyed learning about the culture and meeting the people, but I couldn’t picture a life there.

So when it was time to go home, I was ready. I wanted to be back with my family. As desperately as I once wanted to be free of my routines, I wanted them back—my routines and the life that I have created through a kind of transformation that takes effort, time, and incredible patience.

Today, I’m much closer to living the life rooted in wisdom I wanted so badly then. And I live as authentically as possible, knowing that the transformation continues—all in the comfort and love of my own home.

Thank you for reading.

More about my path and my work is available here.

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