Holding Your Vision When Life Falls Apart

A soul-rooted reflection on vision, nervous system healing, gratitude, and becoming your own safe place.

There are moments on the path when everything seems to push back, when the vision is alive in your heart, but the world around you is full of friction, closed doors, or dead ends.

Moments when your nervous system flares, your faith wavers, and you start to wonder:

Is this a sign to stop? Or a call to go deeper?

I recently faced one of those moments.

After years of healing, dreaming, and calling in something new, I was given the opportunity to root in a place I loved. It felt aligned, fast, and even magical.

For the first time, I could see it, not just in my mind, but in my body. I pictured myself painting in my flowy dress, creating a healing space in one corner, laughter on the sofa, softness in the bedroom. I could feel the colours, the energy, the joy.

This was massive for me. I have struggled with feeling safe at “home” my whole life. I knew this vision could only come once I had learned to feel safe in my body, to regulate my nervous system, to choose from abundance and gratitude, not survival and lack.

And it was working.

Everything was flowing, better and faster than I could have imagined.

Until it wasn’t.

Suddenly, the place was lost. Gone.

And I spiralled.

The grief wasn’t just about the space, it was about what it represented.

Safety. Expansion. Belonging. Creativity.

I started questioning the entire vision. Was I wrong? Did I make it all up?

But in that breakdown, I remembered:

My vision is not a place. It’s a frequency I hold.

That image of me dancing in a flowy dress, safe and alive in a beautiful space, that’s a frequency. That’s home. That’s alignment. And maybe this particular place wasn’t meant to last.

But it brought me closer to what I now know I truly want:

A life filled with safety, peace, beauty, energetic coherence, freedom, joy, creativity, and rest.

And maybe that’s all the purpose it needed to serve

Holding the vision isn’t just about places

The same lesson shows up in different forms:

You stay in a relationship because you felt a vision there. A possibility of deep love, shared growth, real connection. And maybe it was real, for a time. But over time, you find yourself shrinking to keep the peace. Silencing your needs. Betraying your own joy. You keep trying to make the dream work because the potential was beautiful.

Or maybe it’s a job. One that once felt exciting, full of purpose. But now the passion is gone. Your body tightens every morning. And yet, leaving feels terrifying. Because maybe you have never known what freedom feels like. Because maybe your trauma is more comfortable with familiar stress than with uncertain joy.

So… should you stay or should you go?

Some might say:

If you need to regulate your nervous system, you’re probably in the wrong place.

And sometimes, that’s true.

But for those of us healing from trauma, the unfamiliar, even when aligned, can feel terrifying.

Expansion can feel unsafe.

Softness can feel dangerous.

Being seen can feel like exposure.

So how do you tell the difference between your intuition and your trauma?

You regulate your nervous system first.

You get grounded, clear, present. You come back to yourself, not your fear, not your protector parts, but the deeper, wiser part of you that remembers who you are.

From there, alignment becomes visible again.

(I’ll be writing a deeper piece on how to discern trauma from intuition, stay tuned, it’s coming soon.)

Alignment begins within

We often think of alignment as something external: the right timing, the right location, the right people.

But real alignment begins within.

As within, so without.

When resistance shows up on the outside, it’s often mirroring something inside, a pattern, a belief, a fear that is asking to be seen.

Looking back, I realised:

I was about to compromise my emotional wellbeing for a beautiful set of walls.

Yes, the space looked like it had everything I dreamed of. But staying would have meant silencing myself, hiding my emotions, receiving silent treatments, and being gaslit. I would have been creating in a place where my energy had to be shrunk to survive.

The universe asked me:

Can you hold the vision without clinging to the form?

Can you recognise that freedom is more important than aesthetics?

Can you choose peace over performance?

Gratitude: the frequency that changes everything

When I lost the home I thought was the one, I grieved.

But eventually, I came back to gratitude.

Gratitude not just for the vision, but for every step that brought me closer to it.

Can I be grateful for the fact that I had the courage to dream that dream?

Can I be grateful for the big house that wasn’t right, and the small space where I feel free?

Can I be grateful for the lessons, the clarity, the realignment?

Gratitude shifts the story from failure to refinement.

From “I lost it” to “I found more of myself.”

When we root our vision in gratitude, every step counts.

Even the steps that felt like wrong turns.

How to hold the vision when it gets hard

Here are a few things that helped me, and might support you too:

1. Regulate your nervous system

You can’t hear truth through a flooded system.

Ground. Breathe. Move. Rest.

Let your body settle before making decisions.

2. Get honest about what the resistance is showing you

Ask:

-Am I compromising something sacred to stay?

-Am I afraid of the unknown because it’s new… or because it’s wrong?

-What part of me needs reassurance right now?

3. Return to the essence of your vision

Strip it down. What does it feel like?

What emotions live inside your dream?

Safety? Freedom? Joy? Integrity?

4. Let go of the exact form

Sometimes Universe just wanted you to name the dream out loud.

Sometimes that was the activation.

Let it change shape. Stay open.

5. Choose yourself, again and again

When something asks you to betray who you are to make it work, it’s not aligned.

The dream you are holding is not more sacred than the one holding it: you.

And if you’re in it right now…

If you’re in the wobble, the spiral, the in-between,

Breathe.

Come back to yourself.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not doing it wrong.

You are the vision.

Not the house, not the job, not the relationship.

You.

You are the dream your future is rooted in.

You are the home your soul has been seeking.

And everything else, every space, every person, every opportunity, is simply the reflection of your remembering.

So hold yourself.

Let gratitude soften the edges.

Let your nervous system exhale.

Let this moment be part of it, not a detour, but the path.

You are whole.

You are becoming.

And you are exactly where you need to be.