My Journey: A Four Part Story of Awakening, Meaning, and Homecoming

By Haven Duddy

Introduction

This is a four-part story about awakening, meaning, and the long swim back to myself.

It’s a reflection on what I can only describe as my own quiet spiritual enlightenment — the journey that brought me home to the safest place I’ve ever been: My Haven.

And maybe that’s the irony of it all.

I spent so much of my life trying to build safety outside of myself — a perfect life, a perfect home, a perfect world to belong to — only to discover that the raft I built so carefully was quietly sinking.

There came a moment when I had to decide whether to hold on to everything I’d worked for or jump — to risk everything I knew for the possibility of reaching something that didn’t look solid yet, but felt true.

It wasn’t bravery. It wasn’t clarity. It was simply the truth that my raft was going under and staying would cost me my life in a different way.

So I swam — not because I was sure the shore was real, but because abandoning myself was the only option I could no longer live with.

And somehow, choosing myself became the safest place I’ve ever stood.

This is the story of how I found my way back.

Part One — Are You Living in a Nightmare If You Don’t Know You’re Living in One?

It started as a whisper.

A sentence I kept repeating because I didn’t know how else to explain the feeling inside me:

“I don’t know… something feels wrong.”

When people asked what I meant, all I could say was:

“Are you living in a nightmare if you don’t know you’re living in a nightmare?”

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Nightmares don’t announce themselves.

You don’t know it’s a nightmare while you’re in it. You only know once you wake up.

From the outside, nothing looked wrong. My life looked intact. The raft was still floating.

But inside, something was off — tilted, misaligned, just enough to make me question what I had been calling “fine.”

Enlightenment — the real kind — doesn’t arrive like a soft beam of light. It begins like this:

A quiet dread.

A creeping awareness that your life is shifting under your feet and you haven’t caught up yet.

And then the scariest realization:

These are my choices. This is my life.

It sounds obvious when you say it out loud.

But when you finally see it, it hits differently.

You look around at everything — your habits, your relationships, your patterns, your reactions — and think:

“Wait… all of this is mine.”

It’s like waking up in a house and suddenly seeing it as a collection of things you picked up while you were half-asleep.

The nightmare isn’t the chaos — it’s the truth.

You built the life you are now trying to escape.

And once you realize that, you wake up.

Not peacefully — but truthfully.

Part Two — My Match

There are moments when something in you stirs — a warmth, a flicker, a tiny shift you almost miss.

It feels more like recognition than anything dramatic.

For most of my life, I didn’t understand that feeling.

I didn’t know why some connections lit something inside me while others left me untouched.

Back then, I thought the spark was about them.

But now I know:

The spark is about me.

My spark is my emotional intelligence responding to meaning.

It is the part of me that knows when something is real before my mind catches up.

The trouble comes when that spark rises in front of someone who cannot feel their own.

People who cannot feel themselves cannot feel you.

People who don’t understand their own inner world will always misunderstand yours.

But with the right person — someone awake inside themselves — my spark softens.

Not because I shrink, but because it is finally being met.

My match is not the person who ignites me.

My match is the one who understands how to hold the flame with me.

Part Three — My Flame

People talk about feeling too much as if it’s a flaw.

Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too reactive.

But my flame — the way I light up, the way I ache, the way I care — has never been the problem.

The problem was trying to share my life with someone who didn’t know how to feel at all.

If someone doesn’t understand their own feelings, they will never understand yours.

If they have never met their own fear, they won’t recognize yours.

If they have never listened to their own pain, they will tell you to ignore yours.

And the saddest truth is this:

People who don’t honor their own feelings cannot honor yours.

Not because they don’t want to — but because they can’t.

I tried to save people who didn’t believe they were sinking.

I tried to shout warnings to people who thought the raft was safe.

I tried to explain myself to people who could not hear me.

Until the moment came when I understood:

I can’t save them. And they can’t save me.

The moment you choose to leave your raft, the journey turns inward. It is lonely, and it belongs only to the person who chooses to swim. You realize quickly that the more you try to bring other people with you—or get their attention and plead with them to swim to shore too—the more you see how much energy you will lose. And at some point, you understand the truth: if you try to save everyone, you won’t make it. The only thing you can do now is swim.

Part Four — The Shore: The Haven

The swim was terrifying.

The crossing was lonely.

The water was cold and honest.

But when I finally reached the sand — breathless, shaking, awake — I saw them:

Other people who had made the crossing.

People who felt their raft leaking and chose to swim.

People who left behind lives that looked perfect but felt wrong.

People who risked everything for the possibility of something truer.

These are my people.

The ones who understand the cost.

The ones who earned the island.

The ones who know what it means to stand on solid ground.

Because the beach — my Haven, my Safe Harbor — is best shared with those who know what it took to get there.

And here is the softest truth:

We’re here if you want to join us.

There is room on the sand.

There is space for your truth.

There is a place for you beside the fire.

Just know:

The waters between here and there are treacherous.

But the shore — your shore — is worth it.

With Love,

Haven

November 24, 2025