Flourish and Grow

From Despair to Awakening: The Dark Night of the Soul, How life’s unravelling can become the doorway to your spiritual awakening

Have You Ever Felt Like Your Life Was Falling Apart?

Have you ever been through an extremely difficult time in your life — a time when nothing made sense anymore, when you started to question everything you thought you knew about life, yourself, and your identity?

You may have found yourself wondering things like:

• Is there really a point to life?

• I thought I was (or had) a good partner, parent, friend, or person — but maybe not.

• I thought there was a God, but now I’m not so sure.

• Am I broken beyond repair?

• Who am I, really?

• What if everything I believed in isn’t true?

Life feels meaningless, purposeless, and unfair. In a way, it feels like a death — the death of the self and of the conceptual framework you once gave your life.

This experience is known as the Dark Night of the Soul — what yoga refers to as the yoga of despair. While we would never wish such darkness upon ourselves, it carries the potential for profound transformation. Within it lies the opportunity for awakening — a chance to live with greater depth, meaning, and purpose.

Common Triggers for a Dark Night of the Soul

A dark night of the soul can be triggered by life-altering events such as a serious medical crisis, the death of a loved one, a career collapse, or betrayal by a partner or close friend. These experiences can shatter your world because the life you once knew is suddenly gone.

If your sense of meaning was tied to what has now been lost — a role, identity, or relationship — you may find yourself asking, Where can I find meaning and who am I now?

For instance, during a serious medical crisis, you may be thrust into a world where you feel completely out of control. Life can change in an instant. There’s pain, fear, resistance, uncertainty, and exhaustion. A diagnosis may alter what you can do, how you see yourself, and what you thought was important. It can change your relationships — revealing who stays beside you and who quietly exits.

You might react in ways you never expected, and not feel proud of it. You may feel lost, confused, abandoned by God, and disconnected from the person you once were.

My Own Dark Night of the Soul

My own dark night came in my mid-30s after the birth of my second child, in the form of chronic migraine.

For years before that, my migraines were infrequent and manageable. They didn’t challenge my identity or beliefs. I lived comfortably in the illusions I’d built since childhood. My life wasn’t bad — it simply lacked depth. It was built on an unstable framework that could shatter at any moment, leaving me vulnerable to suffering and disconnection.

Then, the attacks began coming back-to-back. I became debilitated — unable to work, care for my children, or function in any way beyond lying in bed. The framework of my life began to collapse.

Doctor after doctor, treatment after treatment, nothing helped. I felt like a shell of myself — lost, broken, and adrift. Like a small boat in a raging storm, I had no anchor, no control, and no sense of when the storm might end.

Despite having loving people around me, I couldn’t connect. I was boiling with anger — angry that no one understood, that others weren’t suffering like I was, that everything I cared about had been taken from me. I wasn’t looking for lessons; I was simply raging against what was. That anger, for a long time, kept me from seeing the larger picture — from finding my way out of suffering.

 Listen to me talk more about this experience on The Midlife Purpose Project

Lessons from the Buddha

During the height of my despair, I heard a quote attributed to the Buddha:

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

At first, I rejected it completely. How could suffering be optional when life felt unbearable? Surely, the Buddha had never faced this.

But over time — through yoga, meditation, breathwork, and deep study of yogic philosophy — those words began to soften something in me.

I came to understand that pain — physical, emotional, or spiritual — is part of being human. What determines whether we suffer is how we relate to that pain. When we resist or assign meaning to it (“This shouldn’t be happening,” “This means my life is over”), we amplify it. When we allow pain to exist and become curious about what it has to teach us, suffering eases.

The pain may remain, but our relationship to it changes. We begin to witness it rather than become it.

I still experience chronic migraine, but I rarely suffer. I remain open to healing, but I also honor the lessons this journey continues to offer.

The Dark Night and Dharma

We can’t always control what happens in life — but we can control how we respond.

Yoga teaches that every moment is an opportunity to offer ourselves to something sacred, to live skillfully even amid life’s chaos. It’s easy to do this when life goes smoothly. The true test — and the true gift — comes when everything falls apart.

During a dark night of the soul, the identity we’ve constructed begins to dissolve. This dismantling forces us inward, compelling us to ask: Who am I, really?

When our personal story disintegrates, we can rewrite it. We can let the soul, not the ego, take the lead and we can uplevel our life. This is where we begin to align with Dharma — our soul’s purpose.

Dharma often gets buried beneath the noise of life. We lose touch with the voice of our highest self. The dark night breaks us open. We no longer have the energy or desire to pretend. Everything false falls away, revealing only what is true and lasting.

Through that breaking, we reconnect to our essence — and from there, we can share our unique gifts with the world.

We are each born with a purpose — a natural gift meant to serve both ourselves and others. Whether that purpose feels grand or quiet doesn’t matter. It is deeply fulfilling, beautiful, and needed.

Living your Dharma heals you. And in healing yourself, you help heal the world.

Practicing your Dharma becomes the anchor in life’s storms. No matter how fierce the waves, it keeps you steady, grounded, connected, and at peace.

Because even in the darkest night, your soul is always guiding you home. 

The Gift in the Darkness

 Have you experienced your own dark night of the soul? I’d love to hear what you discovered through it. Email me at katie@katiefarinas.com  — I promise to respond personally.