I am OK

By someone who had to let it all die to finally begin

I never meant to end up here. Not in Vilnius, not in the year 2025, not like this.

My plan was to move to Miami—a vision so vivid I could feel the Atlantic breeze on my skin. But life has a way of scrapping your plans in the name of a higher truth. My grandmother needed care, and something in me knew I had to return. So I left behind Thailand, my sun-drenched routine, and the dream of palm trees and late-night dancing, and came back to Lithuania.

Coming home wasn’t soft. It wasn’t romantic or nostalgic. It was brutal.

A two-year karmic relationship I had anchored my soul into fell apart, taking every illusion I held with it. It wasn’t just a breakup—it was a full-body exorcism. That relationship, as intense and magnetic as it was, activated every childhood wound I thought I had already healed. Abandonment. Rejection. Not enough-ness. All of it. Therapy saved me. Not by making it easy, but by keeping me grounded through the storm. I cried on every street in Vilnius. I had panic attacks in grocery stores. I didn’t know who I was anymore. But I stayed. I breathed. I let it break me.

It’s June now. I’m sitting in my little apartment in Vilnius Old Town, windows open, rose-scented air drifting in. I’m OK. More than OK. I’m whole in ways I’ve never been before. But that wholeness didn’t come from triumph. It came from devastation, and choosing to meet myself there with tenderness.

I tried a dozen different business ideas—burned through notebooks full of logos, names, dreams. I was grasping for purpose while drowning in grief. Then came clarity, in its own time. A jamu juice brand rooted in ancient healing. A quirky online pet store starring Zoya, my Italian Greyhound, turned fashion icon. A YouTube channel where I tell raw stories of survival and love. And a sacred massage ritual I now offer to others, because the power of a slow, mindful touch is everything.

But none of that mattered until I learned one truth: you can’t build anything lasting on a dysregulated nervous system.

I used to hustle through anxiety. Push through panic. Ignore the dread in my chest and call it ambition. Now I know—before doing, there must be soothing. The nervous system is not some background process; it’s the center of your entire lived experience. And mine was fried. Coming home wasn’t just returning to a place. It was returning to my body.

And here’s the truth about self-love: it’s not pretty. It’s not bubble baths and serums and gentle affirmations. It’s fierce. It’s dragging yourself out of bed when grief tells you to disappear. It’s holding yourself when no one else shows up. It’s learning how to calm the shaking inside you without asking it to stop.

I found salvation in movement. Gym sessions where I felt my strength again. Yoga that taught me to breathe again. Lymphatic drainage that reset everything when I thought I’d collapse. I rebuilt myself with ginger tea, early mornings, and good gut health. (Yes, your gut is your second brain. And yes, kombucha can be holy.)

My nervous system still lags behind. Sometimes, it still feels unsafe even when everything is OK. But I’ve stopped rushing it. I don’t ask it to trust. I show it, over and over again. Safety, like love, is built—not forced.

The truth is, to manifest a new life, the old one has to die. And mine did. Violently. Unexpectedly. Unfairly. Every structure I clung to shattered. Nothing small, nothing graceful. Just ruin.

But ruin is honest. Ruin clears the way.

In the Year of the Snake—a year of shedding skins and silent transformations—I became someone new. Not by chasing light, but by learning to sit in the dark without flinching.

And now? I’m here. In this moment. Breathing, creating, caring for my grandmother, healing the lineage that raised me. Laughing with Zoya. Drinking jamu in the morning sun. Still soft, still raw. Still sometimes afraid.

But above all: I’m OK.

And that, for now, is everything.