Story 4: The Break-up That Awakened Me

When I left my stable job at the mental health hospital, I thought the biggest change in my life was behind me. I didn’t expect my next relationship to become the catalyst for a much deeper transformation — one that would eventually wake me up to who I really am.

He was handsome, a fitness addict and took his personal health seriously, which I appreciated and found attractive. He lived on a farm near Port Elizabeth leading camps for boys who wanted to take a gap year after school. We both traveled back and forth between Windhoek, Cape Town and PE, so we could spend time together. He had family in Cape Town and Namibia and I had family in Cape Town too. The distance made the connection feel exciting, almost romanticized. Although, we didn’t spend enough time together to see the cracks — not at first.

Couple's shoot in Hout Bay. Photographer: Sophie Smith

But as the months passed, something subtle began to reveal itself. We didn’t see eye to eye on many world views. And the root of that difference was his strict Christian upbringing.

I didn’t have an issue with his beliefs. I respected his devotion: the Bible reading, the praying, the way he genuinely tried to be a good person. I also prayed, meditated, practiced self-inquiry and reflected deeply — especially after my yoga teacher training. Our approaches were different, but I wanted to make space for both. However, the deeper our bond grew, the more it highlighted how different we were.

One of the clearest mirrors was his relationship with sexuality. He wanted physical intimacy just as much as I did — sometimes more — yet each time it happened, he spiraled into guilt and self-punishment. I never forced or pushed anything; he was the one who initiated it. But afterwards, he would shame himself for “disobeying God”. Watching someone torture themselves for experiencing something natural, beautiful and sacred was heartbreaking. It felt like watching him live in a cage he didn’t realize he built — and then blame himself every time he reached for the door.

Near the end of the relationship, he even planned to propose. He handmade a ring. I realised that he wanted to get married just so he could sleep with me without guilt. Not because he was ready. Not because our foundations were aligned. But because he wanted relief from his own internal battle.

That realization broke something open in me.

The deeper issue wasn’t sex. It was the worldview that shaped his entire life: God as a judge, obedience as salvation, guilt as a spiritual compass. I didn’t believe in that God. I never had.

But the true turning point came during my 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. It was a life-altering experience — one that gave me an embodied understanding of healing, consciousness and the presence of something divine within me. I felt clarity, truth and a feeling of inner authority that I had never experienced before. I experienced awakening by turning inward. I found God within. I understood how I could, by observing what is happening in my body on a micro-focused level, bring enlightenment to my consciousness and ultimately, become my own healer, mentor, therapist, guru, teacher, etc. simply by being present and allowing the God consciousness to awaken within me.

When I called him afterwards to share what I had discovered, he sounded disappointed. He told me he had been praying for me to “have an encounter with Jesus” and to be “saved.”

That was the moment I knew our paths had split completely.

Hout Bay, Cape Town. Photographer: Sophie Smith

I ended the relationship gently but firmly. He cried. I listened. I felt a flicker of sadness — thirty seconds of grief for the idea of us — and then something strangely calm washed over me. A truth: I could no longer shrink myself to fit into someone else’s box.

He wanted to change me. But I wanted to be free.

Staying was not an option. I would have suffocated the part of myself that was just beginning to awaken — the part that came alive through meditation, self-inquiry and a direct experience of God that lived within me, not in a doctrine.

That breakup didn’t break me. It liberated me.

It set me on the path I walk today — the path of helping others awaken to their own consciousness, their own inner truth and their own highest potential.

Eckhart Tolle said: "Suffering is necessary until you realise it is unnecessary."