The Hardest Year of My Life

The Hardest Year of My Life

This past year — almost a year and a half now — has been the hardest season of my life. Harder than Guillain‑Barré syndrome, harder than any health crisis I’ve faced. Truthfully, I would have rather gone through Guillain‑Barré again than live through this year.

I have lost everything that brought color to my world — everything that gave my life a divine current, a calling, a heartbeat. I lost my family. I lost my marriage. And I’ve been left shattered.

It’s been a roller coaster — a constant flood of feelings, memories, and revelations — and now the hardest part still lies ahead: actually leaving. As much as I need to go, as deeply as I crave a new beginning, it’s still hard to know that a whole chapter, a whole half of my life, is closing.

I’m not “back together” yet. I haven’t even really started. This last year and a half has been about breaking — sometimes by my own hands, sometimes by others’ — and what’s left is someone unfinished. To become someone new, someone stronger, I have to go. I can’t rebuild here, surrounded by ghosts. It’s not about erasing my past, but setting it gently on the shelf for a while.

The life I’m walking toward isn’t the life I wanted — it’s the one that’s left. And even though it comes with possibility, it also carries deep sadness, because none of this was ever the plan. Still, I have to go. I have to live.

For all the stress and struggle of the past, I truly loved my life. I was happy. My husband, our fur babies — they were my reason, my purpose, my joy. I was never someone who needed much beyond love and belonging. And now I have to find something new, even if it feels hollow at first — I’ll have to fill it with glitter, color, or something else that reminds me I’m still alive.

No matter what happens from here — no matter how good or bad things get — nothing will ever compare to the love I shared with my husband. It wasn’t ordinary. It was epic. It was divine. It still burns in me, unquenched, and for now it leaves no room for anyone else. Maybe one day there will be another love, but I’m not chasing that.

What I’m chasing is breath — space — the chance to feel alive again. I’m terrified, because I’m leaving with almost nothing. It’s a full rebuild from below zero. I’m scared I don’t have the strength. I’m also scared that I do — that success might come, but only as a distraction from the emptiness.

Maybe, in time, what’s missing will fade from ache to echo, from echo to shadow. Maybe then I’ll move freely again. But for now, I have to go. I have to see if there’s any light left in this world that’s worth living for — because I can’t find it here.

The echoes of my past are deafening. It’s time to step into the unknown, into the quiet, and begin rebuilding from the dust. I don’t yet know who I’ll become — but if I don’t start now, this version of me will fade away completely.

So here I go. Scared. Broken. But trying.

Dedication to the Gods

To Holy Mother Vestaria, radiant mother of all life, keeper of the hearth, the heart, and the home, whose gentle power cradles the beginnings and endings of every soul—

To the gods who have watched over me through this long night—

To Lord Lucifer, the Lightbringer, the Roman God who illuminates the darkest corners of the soul,

To Hecate, guardian of crossroads and keeper of shadows, torch-bearer at the threshold of transformation,

To Pan, wild and untamed, whose music echoes through primordial forests, tireless in his dance between chaos and creation,

To Persephone, queen of the underworld and herald of spring, who knows the price of descent and the promise of return,

To Hades, sovereign of the unseen realm, who held my grief in sacred stillness when the weight of it threatened to unmake me,

To Dionysus, god of ecstasy and ruin, who whispered that even in breaking, the soul can sing,

To Hera, queen of sacred bonds and fierce protection, guardian of covenant and keeper of what endures,

To Zeus, ruler of boundless skies and tempestuous storms, whose thunder shook me awake when numbness sought to claim me,

To Poseidon, master of depths unfathomed and currents unseen, who taught me that the strongest forces move beneath the surface,

To Apollo, radiant bringer of light, prophecy, and song, whose golden rays cut through the fog when I could see no path,

To Hermes, swift-footed guide between worlds, who led me through the labyrinth when all ways seemed lost,

And to every unseen hand, every divine presence, every cosmic spark that carried me through this year and a half—

This journey is yours as much as mine.

You have witnessed my grief in its rawest form.

You have held my heart when I could no longer bear its weight.

You have seen me shatter into a thousand pieces, and you have gathered every fragment with infinite patience.

You have carried me through the valley of shadows, through the wasteland of all I thought I was, toward the distant shimmer of who I might yet become.

Now, as I stand at this threshold between what was and what will be, I offer this prayer:

May the dust of all that I was become the fertile soil of who I will be.

May the echoes of what has been fade into shadow, leaving only the light I am yet to claim.

May I rise again—not as who I was, but as who I was always meant to become.

Let the ashes of my former self scatter on the wind.

Let the chains of yesterday fall away like dead leaves.

Let the fire within me—that small, stubborn ember you kept alive through the longest night—grow into a conflagration that illuminates my path forward.

I do not know what awaits me in this unknown territory.

I cannot see the shape of the future that calls to me from beyond the veil.

But I know this: I am not who I was. And I am not yet who I will be.

I am the space between—the breath between exhale and inhale, the pause between one life and another.

And in this sacred liminality, I feel your presence more keenly than ever.

With gratitude deeper than the ocean,

With reverence that could move mountains,

With love unbroken and unbreakable,

I step forward into the unknown.

Not alone. Never alone.

Carried by your grace, guided by your wisdom, transformed by your mysteries.

This is not an ending.

This is a becoming.

And I walk toward it with my head held high, my heart cracked open, and my spirit finally, finally free.

Dusty Ray Windsoul