When Life Forces You to Find a New Path

By Jax Southam

Sometimes the universe has a way of redirecting us when we're too busy helping everyone else to listen to what our soul is trying to tell us.

When I accepted a role leading a team of Social Prescribers in the NHS, I thought I had found my perfect position. Every day I had the privilege of working with a wonderful team and supporting men and women through their darkest moments ~ those dealing with depression, anxiety, and life challenges that couldn't be fixed with a prescription pad. I loved connecting people with the resources and hope they needed to rebuild their lives.

But life, as it often does, had other plans for me.

The Moment Everything Changed

When cognitive illness forced my early retirement from the NHS, I felt like I'd lost everything that defined me. Who was I if I wasn't the person others turned to for support? How could I help anyone when I couldn't even trust my own mind to function the way it always had?

The woman who had spent her career lifting others up suddenly found herself in the deepest valley of her own life.

I won't lie - there were dark days. Days when I questioned everything about my purpose, my worth, and my future. The identity I'd built around being a helper, a leader, a source of strength for others, seemed to crumble overnight.

Finding Light in the Darkness

But here's what I discovered during those challenging months: sometimes we need to lose ourselves completely to find who we were truly meant to be.

As I began to heal, I realised that my spiritual gifts ~ the ones I'd been developing since 1996 when I first qualified with the National Federation of Spiritual Healers - weren't separate from my calling to help others; they were the missing piece I'd been searching for all along.

My counselling training, my CBT knowledge, my experience in spiritual coaching ~ suddenly I could see how all these threads were weaving together into something bigger. Something that could reach women in ways the traditional healthcare system couldn't.

The Birth of Awakened Realm

That's when Awakened Realm was born - not from a place of having it all figured out, but from the raw, honest understanding of what it feels like to lose your way and need to find it again.

Every woman I'd supported in the NHS had taught me something about resilience, about the power of the human spirit, about the courage it takes to rebuild your life. Now I could combine those insights with the spiritual tools that had helped me navigate my own transformation.

Your Story Matters Too

If you're reading this and feeling lost, stuck, or wondering if there's more to life than that which you're currently experiencing, I want you to know that your story isn't over. Sometimes the chapters that feel like endings are actually new beginnings in disguise.

The courage that carried you through whatever challenges you're facing right now is the same courage that will guide you toward the life you were meant to live.

You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to be willing to take the first step toward discovering who you were meant to be.

And if you need a roadmap or a guiding hand, Chapter One of our

'Be the 'You' you were meant to be'

course is waiting for you here.