Does everything truly happen for a reason?
On finding meaning not in the moment, but in what we choose to create from it.
What if the meaning comes after?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between the phrase “everything happens for a reason” and the idea that things happen and we get to create the reason.
Because when you're in the middle of a storm, when everything feels uncertain or like it’s falling apart, it’s nearly impossible to see the bigger picture. And honestly, maybe that’s not the point.
Not everything needs to make sense in the moment. Sometimes things are just hard. Life is unpredictable. People leave. Plans fall apart. You get knocked down in ways you never saw coming. And trying to make sense of it all too soon can feel like pouring salt on an open wound.
But still, we move. We keep going. Breath by breath. Step by step. We survive. We hold ourselves through it.
And eventually, on the other side, we begin to understand. Maybe not fully, and maybe not all at once. But we start to find meaning. We get to decide what it all meant. We get to choose what we want to carry forward, and what we need to let go of.
This is the beauty of being human. We don’t always get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose how we alchemize it. How we turn pain into purpose. How we turn endings into beginnings.
So no, maybe not everything happens for a reason.
But you get to find your reason.
You get to create it.
And that, to me, is even more powerful.
This truth landed in me after one of the hardest seasons of my life.
In 2020, everything I had built came undone.
I went through a breakup that shook my entire world. The relationship had been public. We had built a life together. Losing it felt like losing myself. At the same time, I left my full-time job at Mirror for a new opportunity that felt exciting, but it fell through. Suddenly, the ground beneath me wasn’t just cracking: it had disappeared.
I felt completely untethered.
And so, I made a decision that changed everything.
I checked myself into a mental health treatment facility for 30 days. It was the hardest and most sacred decision I’ve ever made. In that space, away from the noise and expectations, I started facing the trauma I had long avoided. I began the work of rebuilding. Of remembering who I really was underneath it all.
That choice—to heal, to pause, to feel—led me to move to Los Angeles.
Where I met the best friends of my life.
Where I remembered my gifts as a teacher.
Where I found a new way to move and lead, not just in fitness, but in embodiment.
I started teaching strength training as a meditation. A way to listen, to breathe, to come home to the body. And I wrote a novel based on that season of healing, the unraveling, the remembering, and the in-between.
I never thought I’d share it. But now, I am.
One chapter at a time.
📖 Read Chapter 1 of The In-Between here
There’s a teaching in Kabbalah called Tikkun, which means soul correction. It’s the belief that each of us comes into this life with something to repair. A lesson to live through. A mission to fulfill, not through perfection, but through our willingness to evolve.
My Tikkun, I believe, is learning how to parent myself.
To cultivate the strength I once searched for in others.
To tell the truth of my story so others can remember their own.
To live with softness and power, and to teach others how to do the same.
As Viktor Frankl wrote:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
We don’t always get to control what happens.
But we do get to choose how we rise.
How we breathe.
How we create meaning from what we’ve lived.
So I’ll leave you with this:
Is there a moment in your life that made no sense at the time, but looking back, you now understand the gift it held?
Or maybe you're still in it. Still walking through the fog.
Wherever you are, trust this:
The meaning will come.
And when it does, it will be yours to claim.
