An Empath's Awakening Journey to Self-Love Healing
- Jul 14, 2025
- 4 min read

In 2019, I experienced one of the greatest and most impactful spiritual awakenings of my life yet to date. Up until that time, I lived over 30 years as an empath with wounds deeply rooted in self-destructive and self-loathing behaviour patterns. These patterns showed up in a variety of different ways from the choices I made - social anxiety, substance use, complex-PTSD, codependency, people pleasing, and more. I was not ready, willing, nor desired to change my life or doing any type of healing work, as I was not ready to admit to myself that there was a problem.
Empaths Coping Instead of Healing
I coped with life in ways that allowed me to dismiss, ignore, numb the pain I experienced.
As they say, "misery loves company," and being an empath, I was easily able to find many people who resonated with having unhealthy coping mechanisms and no drive to do the actual work to heal within.
Certainly not all, but many of the company I chose to keep (myself included) did not have my best interest in mind. I realized later through deep inner healing work that these harmful relationships were actually an external reflection of the relationship I had with myself and an internal struggle of immensely lacking self-worth...
Overall, my self-care practices were massively misguided (for example, by thinking self-care was "caring" to find the bottom of a bottle to numb out the internal pain I felt deep within), and self-love was non-existent in every sense of the word.
I graduated from university as a mature student with a Bachelor of Science in Health Promotion, which was my greatest life accomplishment - until my wellness transformation through my spiritual awakening years later. Looking back in retrospect, the irony is not lost of that version of me studying primary prevention interventions to promote health and wellbeing.
However, from my new perspective, I can see how divinely orchestrated life truly is, as the person I am today was birthed from those unconscious origins. Therefore, I am able to hold a meaningful appreciation and deep gratitude for those life lessons.
Breaking Point
All of the unhealthy life choices I was making came to a breaking point and I had my “ENOUGH!!” moment. The time finally arrived where I vowed to make meaningful changes and begin take responsibility for my life to finally identify and address inner wounding that dictated my existence – and to therefore learn how to love myself. . . . Little did I know at the time, but this was also a significant jump in my spiritual evolution!

Making the decision to accept responsibility for my life up until that point was not easy. It hurt, a lot. My ego kicked and screamed, as it preferred to run the show from behind the curtain - not to have the spotlight shined on it at centre stage.
I had two options: Either keep doing what I was doing, getting the same undesirable, unfulfilling outcomes and feelings of unhappiness . . . Or, I could try something totally new. . . .
Drastically Changing Trajectory
This time I chose to do things differently by objectively and compassionately assessing my person (ie: me) and life circumstances while asking myself "Who do I want to be?" and "how do I want to live?"
So, like many on their spiritual path, I decided to retreat into a profoundly deep hermetic expedition focused on self-discovery and healing. I decided to make a major life transformation shifting paradigms that drastically changed the trajectory of my life through ending unhealthy and toxic relationships, connecting to my true feelings, starting a daily integrated wellness plan focusing on aligning physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This included yoga, meditation, mindfulness exercises, mindset rewiring, body awareness, addressing inner wounding, and more.
Within a couple months into 2020, I even stopped drinking alcohol!!!
Accountability is Key
As I took more and more self-responsibility and accountability for my reality and delved deeper into an expansive state of metaphysical self-exploration, new and transcendent experiences, spiritual teachers, and healing practices were attracted into my life. Through all of the grit and hard work, I discovered and unveiled some of my innate gifts, skills, and abilities . . . all of which are built on a foundation of intuitive connection to my higher self and spirit guides.
Outside My Comfort Zone

At long last and nearly six years later, I am following a higher calling to retire from the comfort and safe haven of the hermit stage of my awakening. By deciding to take this monumental step, my intention of putting myself out there to be seen is to
share the awakening journey with other empaths who are looking to shift their lives and take accountability.
I hope to provide some inspiration, insight, and perhaps entertainment as I share this wild adventure of constant learning, growth and development all while sharing my experience with metaphysical principals and fine tuning my innate gifts, skills, and abilities.
So, I hope you'll join and grow with me as I chronicle this exciting and shocking (to my ego) chapter, as I expand outside of my comfort zone, take a trust fall with the universe, and follow the divine calling to take a leap of faith onto this new timeline.
Much love,
Amanda
Copyright © 2025 Amanda MacLeod. All Rights Reserved.




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