From Pain to Power: The Path I Chose
- Aug 11, 2025
- 3 min read
By Christy Whitman
There are moments in life that split everything into a “before” and “after.” For me, that moment came when I was 27, walking back into my home after a transformative meditation retreat. I was just beginning to explore the depths of my spiritual and emotional self, committed to building a life of more presence, awareness, and peace. But as I stepped through the door, the phone rang. My partner picked it up. It was my mother. And in the seconds that followed, my world shattered.
She told me that my sister had taken her own life.
I dropped to the floor in utter heartbreak, feeling like the ground had been pulled out from beneath me. There are no words that can fully capture the shock, grief, and confusion that flooded me in that moment. But even as I lay there in a pool of sorrow, something inside of me whispered: feel it all. Everything I had been learning through meditation, mindfulness, and self-awareness rose to meet me. And instead of running from the pain, I turned toward it.
I cried. I screamed. I raged. I let the waves of emotion crash through me instead of stuffing them down, as I might have done in the past. I realized that the only way out was through. My sister’s passing broke me open, but it also revealed the raw power of healing—not by bypassing grief, but by honoring it. I made a commitment to myself at that moment: I would heal, not just for me, but for others. I refused to let her story end in silence or stigma.
That commitment became a book Why Did She Choose Suicide. It was a painful yet cathartic creation—my way of transforming tragedy into a tool for connection, healing, and understanding. I knew that if I could help even one person feel less alone, if I could guide someone else to feel instead of suppress, then my sister’s story would carry meaning and light beyond the darkness.
To this day, I still have moments where the grief visits. When that familiar ache of missing her arises, I don’t push it away.
I pause. I breathe. I create space for the energy to move through me, so I can return to freedom. This is what it means to heal: not to be untouched by pain, but to know how to alchemize it.
Looking back, I realize I once believed being “unstoppable” meant pushing through, being tough, never showing weakness. But now, after everything, unstoppable means something entirely different. It means being willing to feel. It means understanding that pain and joy are part of the same spectrum—and you can’t numb one without numbing the other. Before, I used vices to avoid myself and my feelings. Now, I use awareness to heal.
In my latest book, The Flow Factor: How To Master Your Energy To Enter A State of Flow, I describe these “bushwack” moments—the unexpected traumas and losses that cut through life like a machete in the jungle. These moments can trap us in trauma if we resist them. Or they can become gateways to growth and empowerment, if we choose to master our energy, our story, and our healing.
That’s what makes someone unstoppable.
If I could speak to the version of me who almost gave up, who felt consumed by grief and hopelessness, I would say this: Your future is so bright. I know this feels unbearable right now, but please—let yourself feel it all. Don’t run. Don’t shut down. Every tear, every moment of pain is here to teach you something profound. Giving up is not an option, because what’s on the other side of this will one day make sense. You are safe. You’ve got this. This, too, is temporary.
From pain to power—that is the path I chose. And now, I walk it every day, knowing that in allowing myself to feel everything, I have found my freedom, and I am unstoppable.
Christy Whitman is a New York Times bestselling author and transformational leader. She has appeared on The Today Show, The Morning Show, TedX, and The Hallmark Channel, and her work has been featured in numerous publications and magazines. Christy teaches the Law of Attraction, energy mastery, and personal development classes, meditations, and private sessions to help clients feel more aligned with the Divine Design of well-being, abundance, and success. She currently lives in sunny Arizona with her husband and two boys.
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