The Wound Is the Medicine: Akhilanda, Trauma, and the Alchemy of Becoming

There’s a quote often attributed to Rumi that says the wound is where the light enters you.

I’ve always felt the truth of that in my body, not as spiritual poetry or bypassing, but as lived reality.

In Hindu mythology, Goddess Akhilanda, also known as Akhilandeshwari, is called “the never not broken one.” She embodies transformation through fragmentation. She rides an alligator, symbol of fear, unpredictability, and primal survival, teaching that we don’t escape chaos to heal. We learn to ride it.

Akhilanda is said to have emerged during a time of cosmic imbalance, not through a gentle birth, but as a response to upheaval itself. Her medicine is simple and radical. Breaking is not the end. Reorganization is the beginning.

That truth lives right at the intersection of spirituality and neuroscience.

Psychology has a name for the phenomenon where people experience positive transformation after adversity. It’s called Post Traumatic Growth. This doesn’t mean trauma is good. It doesn’t mean pain was necessary. It doesn’t romanticize suffering. It simply recognizes that when humans are given enough safety and support to integrate what happened, something profound can occur.

People often report deeper appreciation for life, more meaningful relationships, greater inner strength, spiritual awakening, and a clearer sense of purpose. This is Akhilanda in clinical language.

Trauma fractures identity. When the nervous system is allowed to process those fractures, the cracks can become channels for wisdom, boundaries, compassion, creativity, and embodiment. Not because trauma made you special, but because your system adapted.

Biology offers another lens called hormesis, the idea that manageable stress followed by recovery can strengthen a system. Muscles grow this way. Immune systems learn this way. Emotional resilience develops this way too. The deciding factor is not the stress itself. It’s what comes after. Without regulation, stress becomes injury. With regulation and integration, stress becomes information.

Healing doesn’t happen in the mind alone. It happens in the body, through breath, sensation, emotion, meaning, and safety. This is the alchemy.

I know this not just professionally, but personally.

I experienced chronic, complex trauma in my childhood. At fourteen years old, I remember watching interviews with people who had survived incredible adversity on Oprah. I remember thinking that my story could be an episode.

Then something happened.

A realization moved through my body. I could let my story hold me back and make me weak, or I could use it to become stronger. It wasn’t intellectual. It was cellular. Something integrated deeply inside me.

I didn’t suddenly know how to heal. I didn’t yet have language for trauma, nervous systems, or embodiment. But I made a choice. I chose to become.

Life didn’t soften after that. I continued to endure pain and trauma. But everything shifted internally. There was now a quiet orientation toward growth, toward meaning, toward transformation.

I didn’t know how to practice this, so I practiced the only way I could. By surviving. By reflecting. By refusing to collapse into bitterness. By listening to my body before I knew what that meant.

That moment became a compass.

At forty two, it still feels alive.

Looking back now, with decades of trauma training, nervous system education, and spiritual study behind me, I can see exactly what happened. My system initiated Post Traumatic Growth. My biology engaged hormesis. My soul said yes to alchemy. I didn’t bypass the pain. I metabolized it over time.

And here’s something I know with complete clarity.

I wouldn’t trade anything I’ve been through if it meant losing even a piece of my strength or wisdom.

This is why I can say, with both tenderness and certainty, that your struggles are not proof of failure. They are portals.

You didn’t get it wrong. Your coping strategies made sense. Your patterns were intelligent. Your shutdowns were protective. Every version of you was trying to survive. Your nervous system has been collecting data. Your soul has been gathering experience.

The cracks in your story are not defects. They are initiation points.

And here’s the deeper truth most people never hear.

The wound is the source of the medicine.

The very places you learned to armor are also where your power lives, not through forcing positivity or bypassing pain, but through gentle, embodied reorganization.

This is what Akhilanda teaches. This is what neuroscience confirms. This is what I help people do.

My work blends nervous system science, trauma integration, and spiritual embodiment. I don’t offer quick fixes. I don’t override your body with affirmations it doesn’t believe. I don’t chase symptoms. I help you soften survival patterns, build internal safety, rewire belief at the somatic level, turn pain into usable wisdom, reclaim agency over your inner world, and learn how to ride your own alligator.

This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you already are beneath conditioning, trauma, and inherited limits.

If something in this stirred recognition rather than hype, trust that.

You don’t need to be fixed. You need space to integrate.

I offer one-on-one spiritual coaching and nervous system-aligned alchemical practices for people who are ready to transform insight into embodied change. Your path isn’t behind you. It’s unfolding.

And if you’d like support walking it with intention, I’d be honored to hold that container with you.

The medicine is already inside you.

Sometimes you just need someone who knows how to help you access it.