This Is Not Happening to You. It Is Happening for You.

When Life Slaps You Awake

Four years ago, during one of the hardest periods of my life, someone said something to me that at first felt impossible to receive.

“This is not happening to you. It is happening for you.”

At the time, I wanted to reject it.

Because when you are in survival mode—when your body is struggling, your heart is exhausted, or life feels unfair—growth is the last thing you want to hear about.

But over time, those words stopped sounding like spiritual comfort and started becoming a question.

What if disruption is not punishment?

What if challenge is not proof life is against us?

What if some seasons are not here to break us—but to wake us?

I have returned to this question again and again through different chapters of my life.

And recently, I found myself standing in front of it once more.

The Season That Changed Everything

My relationship with healing did not begin with me.

It began with my daughter.

Years ago, I found myself sitting in rooms listening to outcomes, statistics, limitations and predictions surrounding her acquired brain injury.

People spoke with certainty.

But something inside me refused to accept certainty.

Not because I believed medicine had no value.

But because I could not accept that possibility had ended.

So I began studying.

Not casually.

Obsessively.

I immersed myself in neuroscience, human behaviour, Eastern approaches to health, trauma, psychology, spirituality, healing practices and endless books.

I wanted to understand one question:

How much influence do we actually have?

Back then I remember hearing people say we only use a small percentage of our brain and thinking—

If that is true… what is the rest doing?

Later I learned the statement itself is largely a myth.

But the question underneath it stayed important.

How much untapped potential exists inside us?

What I eventually discovered was not hidden brain capacity.

It was something far more powerful.

Adaptation.

Neuroplasticity.

Mind Versus Brain: The Conversation That Changed My Perspective

Recently I listened to Dr Caroline Leaf speaking with Andre Duqum discussing the difference between mind and brain.

Her explanation stopped me.

She describes the brain as the physical organ.

But the mind as something broader—the process through which we think, choose, interpret, feel, imagine and create meaning.

The brain is structure.

The mind is process.

One receives and changes.

The other directs.

Her work suggests that our repeated thoughts, emotions and interpretations can influence physical brain patterns over time.

Modern neuroscience strongly supports that experiences, attention, learning and repetition reshape neural pathways.

Where opinions begin to differ is how far that influence extends.

But regardless of philosophy, there is one idea that feels undeniable:

Your internal world matters.

Words matter.

Labels matter.

Attention matters.

What we repeatedly tell ourselves becomes familiar.

What becomes familiar starts feeling true.

What feels true begins shaping behaviour.

Behaviour shapes outcomes.

This is not magical thinking.

This is the relationship between perception, emotion, physiology and action.

And suddenly I realised—

much of what I had been doing naturally all those years had a name.

The Body Is Listening

Over time I became increasingly aware that how we speak about ourselves affects how we experience ourselves.

Not because illness is imagined.

Not because mindset cures everything.

But because bodies do not operate independently from emotion.

Stress changes chemistry.

Belief changes behaviour.

Fear changes physiology.

Hope changes action.

The body is always responding.

I started noticing how labels become identities.

How stories become expectations.

How expectations become limitations.

And how healing sometimes begins by changing the conversation.

Not denying reality—

but refusing to let reality become prophecy.

The Health Wake-Up Call

Now I find myself facing another health challenge.

And recently after a doctor’s appointment I had a moment of uncomfortable honesty.

I realised I was angry.

Angry at my body.

Angry at myself.

Angry that I had drifted from practices that once felt foundational.

I forgot something important.

Not just practices.

Not just routines.

I forgot parts of myself.

I became intensely focused on the physical.

Train.

Eat well.

Show up.

Keep moving.

And somewhere in trying to optimise health, I drifted from something that has always been one of my greatest strengths—

my beautiful, curious mind.

The part of me that questions.

The part that wonders.

The part that refuses to accept simple answers to complex experiences.

The part that asks—

Why?

What else is possible?

What are we missing?

What if there is another way?

For a long time I didn’t realise that curiosity is something many of us learn to suppress.

As children we ask endless questions.

Then slowly we are taught to become easier.

More acceptable.

More certain.

Stop overthinking.

Stop being sensitive.

Stop questioning.

Stop imagining.

Stop going so deep.

You think too much.

You ask too many questions.

Eventually many of us begin editing ourselves.

Not because curiosity disappeared—

but because we learned it was inconvenient.

We learn to trade wonder for certainty.

Depth for acceptance.

Intuition for approval.

And somewhere along the way we begin to mistrust the very thing that once made us feel alive.

But curiosity is not dysfunction.

Curiosity is intelligence.

Curiosity is aliveness.

Curiosity is often the birthplace of healing.

It was curiosity that made me question outcomes.

Curiosity that led me to learn.

Curiosity that expanded possibility.

Curiosity that helped me see my daughter beyond diagnosis.

Curiosity that brought me back to myself.

So perhaps this current season is not asking me to become someone else.

Perhaps it is asking me to stop apologising for the parts of me that were never broken.

To return to the beautiful mind that asks difficult questions.

To trust the parts of myself that wonder.

To remember that my curiosity was never the problem.

It was always the doorway.

Remembering Instead of Repairing

The other morning at 3am in the gym with my partner—yes, an unusual hour but strangely sacred—I had a thought.

Maybe healing is not always becoming.

Maybe healing is remembering.

Remembering practices.

Remembering trust.

Remembering what makes you feel connected.

Over the last few nights I returned to things that feel like life force.

I sat quietly.

I reflected.

I called on my healed and benevolent ancestors.

I returned to my mesa.

I asked to be shown.

Show me what I am missing.

Show me where balance has disappeared.

Show me the next step.

And something softened.

Not because symptoms disappeared.

But because I stopped fighting myself.

Perhaps This Is Happening For Me

I am not grateful for suffering.

But I am beginning to respect what challenge reveals.

This moment may not be asking me to become someone new.

Maybe it is asking me to return.

Back to balance.

Back to curiosity.

Back to trust.

Back to the understanding that healing was never only about fixing the body.

It was always about becoming whole.

So if you are in your own season of challenge—

I leave you with the same words that once frustrated me.

Maybe this is not happening to you.

Maybe—

in ways you cannot yet see—

it is happening for you.

Author

Julia Longin