We all go through a Dark Night of the Soul at some point in our life. A dark night of the soul is a crisis of some sort that waivers your faith, shakes the foundation beneath your feet, completely disrupts your life in every way possible. It's a period of spiritual and personal desolation, a state of feeling completely ruined and broken. It often feels like the world is ending, the walls are closing in, everything you love has fallen apart. The foundation beneath your feet is gone. Your support system has vanished. And everything that you knew to be true about your life has completely disintegrated. We are often inconsolable during this time. It could be the death of a loved one, the ending of a marriage, the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease, being cast out of a social group, or any other big event that rocks your world and sense of self. 

A Dark Night of the Soul is one of the biggest learning moments in our lives and can propel us into spiritual growth if we allow it to. It can be a fast track in personal development where you transition into deeper clarity, spiritual maturity, and understanding of life and your place in the universe. And it often changes our perception about who we are. You often end up shedding many conclusions you drew about who you are and what life is, such as your identity, career, relationships, belief system—things that previously helped you construct meaning in your life. You typically never come out of a Dark Night of the Soul the same person as you went in.

Usually, once you land again, the ground beneath your feet is much more firm and you come out a much stronger, more well adjusted, grounded person. Now I've gone through two dark nights of the soul in my adult life, and the second one happened when members of a community that I was a part of spread lies about me on the internet.

And I think that this is a good one for me to talk about because how many people can relate to being bullied or to having someone say something rude to them online from the safe anonymity of behind their computer screen, or have seen internet trolls out there, or have seen cancel culture take people down. So it feels really relevant in our day and age. And that's essentially what happened to me. 

The people who posted about me created an invisible filter that distorted everything I had said and done and then flipped it to fit the narrative they were telling. Friends who knew what those people were saying was untrue did not stand up for me. Other people who had told me how much I had changed their life, and how grateful they were for me just months earlier, were now liking posts that were libeling me. Essentially, they were rewriting their experience. It was the strangest thing I had ever watched unfold, like witnessing a live psychology experiment to see who would get pulled into this, this thought form of energy. 

The whole experience was really traumatic for me. I felt publicly humiliated and attacked, yet silenced since comments were disabled so I couldn’t defend myself. I felt completely betrayed by friends. I felt completely outcast and lost. I felt like my voice was taken away because I couldn't defend myself. People who had never met me before were helping spread lies about me. It was infuriating and frustrating. I felt unsafe. I feared for my safety and for my family’s safety. For a while, the whole experience robbed me of my joy, stripped me of my confidence, and destroyed my trust in people. I was angry, traumatized, and didn’t know whom to trust. I just wanted to get away from everyone.

The week this all happened I ended up calling about 80 people who were part of this community on the phone and just, just talking to them and just being there to listen and to process and answer any questions they had and to process with them because the whole thing was crazy for me too. We were all losing our community, which was really, really tight-knit. And that was one of the most exhausting things I've ever done. For two weeks straight, I spoke to 80 people on the phone. Some I stayed on the phone with for hours - as long as they needed. And all of those people told me that what was written out there wasn't the truth according to them. They didn't resonate with it. That wasn't their experience. They didn't feel that way about me. So that was comforting that behind closed doors people were telling me that, but publicly it looked like the world was against me.

As I sorted through my strong feelings, I realized that the people who had written these hurtful things had made assumptions about me based on the limited amount of knowledge they had. They filled in the knowledge gaps by creating stories in their heads, which they let fester until they built up, and then they posted lies on the internet. The Four Agreements teaches us to never make assumptions for exactly this reason: we make up stories in our head that become so distorted and far from the truth and end up causing us distress.

Another one of The Four Agreements is to be impeccable with your word. Now if you’ve been listening to my podcast or have studied spirituality you know that words are powerful. Don Miguel Ruiz explains how, unfortunately, in our modern society, most people use the word to spread their personal poison of anger, jealousy, resentment, and hate. Rather than using the word for good, most people use the word to curse and blame others, to find guilt and plan revenge, and to create chaos and destruction. He asks readers to think back on a time when they were angry at someone and wanted revenge, then explains that in order to achieve revenge, they said something to or about another person with the sole intention of causing them harm. People are so calculated in their attempts to bring other people down and then lie to themselves to justify their own actions and feel better about the pain they have caused. They tell themselves that the person deserved their poison and received the proper punishment for their wrongdoing. But of course, this is not true.

It's like trying to create a war to fight for peace. That is not the way we help heal other people. 

So what I ended up doing is talking to three separate therapists in the months after. And I went into the therapy sessions very hesitant, very full of shame, feeling humiliated, expecting to be shamed by these therapists like I had been by all of these other people. But I was very honest because I wanted really good advice. So I told them the whole situation best I could without any lens attached. I told them the nature of the attacks, that I was the person being cast up on the stake. I explained how everything had happened and I expected to be shunned. But it couldn’t have been farther from the truth. 

All three therapists said it was about boundaries. This was a lesson in having my boundaries up now. The people who had lashed out and attacked me online hadn’t set proper boundaries for themselves when they were part of the community, meaning if they didn’t like something, they could have made the choice to walk away and leave, to pursue what would make them happy rather than stay and let these negative thoughts just kind of brew beneath the surface. No one was forced to stay.

This was a yoga community. Most people were paid $35 a class and most people between one class a week and one class a month as a side hobby because it was just a community that loved getting together and teaching yoga. But everyone else had their own regular full-time jobs. 

The therapists said my work right now was to understand what part of the whole thing belonged to me and what part belonged to other people. The part that belonged to other people, they said, was that they decided to make assumptions and then tell lies based on those assumptions, to place meaning on top of things I might have said or done, to take things personally or to be offended, to see things through their lens only, to anonymously lash out online rather than have a face-to-face conversation with myself or anyone else who was higher up who might have been able to help figure something out, and to rewrite their experience. I hadn’t done anything wrong, the therapists assured me. It was the other peoples’ interpretation of events and how they acted that was the problem and showed where they still had a lot of healing and spiritual growth to do. We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Just like how we manifest our world, our reality is seen through our own lens and our own story..

The part that did belong to me, according to the therapists, was how I reacted or responded now. Where I went from here. I needed to stop beating myself up about it. They said people’s behavior is more about who they are than who I am. They said this event challenged my capacity to not take things personally. You are not responsible for anyone’s distorted perception of you, they told me. I needed to stand unyielding in my truth, that I know who I was for these people and how I showed up for them, and that my intentions were pure. How they interpreted that was out of my control and not mine to focus on.

I started to pull myself out of the rut. I dove back into the teachings and rituals and self-care habits that I share in this book. The joy crept back into my life.

Now when all of this happened, it was really interesting. I've always been very, very skinny, and had a very hard time putting on weight. But when all these attacks started happening, I rapidly gained weight and I assumed it was because I got put into a Hashimoto's flare-up from the stress. But once I healed myself emotionally, the weight very quickly melted off without my having to do anything. It was like I had put up this barrier around myself unconsciously to help shield myself from these attacks. And then once that barrier wasn't needed anymore, it just fell away. 

I came back stronger and wiser and more careful with my boundaries and whom I give my energy and attention to. My capacity to not take things personally has expanded, and I try to check myself anytime I catch myself making my own assumptions. I understand now with much more clarity and certainty that the way others behave toward me has much more to do with who they are and the lens through which they view the world than it does with me.

I’ve since let go of my anger and hurt and forgiven every single person. Thinking about the events and people who were involved is not something I waste my energy on anymore. It’s not about finding out the why of something that happened. Why is not a spiritual question and obsessing about the “why” isn’t useful. Insight doesn’t create transformation. Knowing why something happened doesn’t change the trajectory of your future. It’s instead about asking what and how questions like, “What next step can I take?” or “How can I use this opportunity to grow?”

The only two paths forward are to forgive and get better or to hold onto resentment and get bitter.

Mary Morrissey likes to say she has “two black belts: one in success and one in failure.” I am inspired by her story. She built a multimillion-dollar business and lost everything overnight when it came out that her husband at the time embezzled money from their company. The newspapers dragged her name through the mud because people accused her of being involved or knowing about it, but she picked herself up and built another multimillion-dollar business, paid all the money back, and tells her story openly at every event like I’ve just told you mine.

There is nothing so bad that can happen to you that you don’t deserve to build your dream life. And no matter how leveled you feel, you can always build up. You can always start over. All you can do in the moment is try to make it right the best you can, and then move forward with your life, taking the lessons with you, and letting go of the emotions. To quote the four agreements: Always do the best you can, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and be impeccable with your own word even when people are throwing daggers of lies at you. And forgive everyone involved, including yourself. No one deserves to be punished forever.

Several months later, with the dust of the drama starting to settle, I launched my own yoga company - which is something that I had journaled about doing all along. A large majority of the people who liked the posts about me took classes at my new yoga studio the first week we opened. Twenty-three came and worked for me as teachers. Just as many more reached out, wanting to teach, but I just didn’t have the space for them. And at this point, practically everyone has dropped in for at least one class at my new business to show their support. Pretty wild, huh?

Now that I’m on the other side and have enough distance from it all, I can actually say that I’m grateful it all happened. I really mean that. The Kris going through that would be shocked to hear me say that but it’s the truth. My growth accelerated in ways it wouldn’t have otherwise and I learned things and made realizations that I couldn’t have possibly imagined before. It’s the difference between sitting in on a lecture and participating in a lab where you get to be hands-on. And the best part? I love this version of who I have become!

Looking back at the events, I can see so clearly that although a lot of those people probably believe they were doing the right thing by taking the route of attacking, they became the very thing they were fighting against. We go back to the old adage that hurt people, hurt people. 

And so the cycle continues.

Until someone decides to break it. 

Since our lives are so intertwined and we live in this interconnected world where we're all reflections of each other and there's this quantum energy field that shows us in, in our lives, what thoughts and feelings we're thinking and feeling. all it takes is one person to summon up the courage to make a different choice. One person to be able to watch the evening news and choose to not feel passionate anger or the need for vengeance when they hear about people who have caused others harm. One person to not lash out emotionally when they have been let down and their trust is betrayed. One person to not feel blind rage and instead choose to let it go when they are being insulted. One person to choose kindness even when they are being attacked. One person to respond to hate with love. 

As this one person makes the choice to respond in a new way to an old paradigm, they make the path easier for everyone else. As more people follow suit, eventually a tipping point will be reached in the cosmic canvas and all of humanity can boldly step closer toward love and peace.

And that is how we heal a sick society. 

So things happen in life that test you, but it's how you manage those things that dictates how you come out on the other side. It's who you choose to be on the other side that really matters. It's staying true to your principles even when it feels like the world is against you. Because every tragedy, every heartbreak in life contains within it a hidden Easter egg. And once you find that Easter egg, an enormous amount of growth, learning and leveling up takes place. 

Now you'll always have haters, you'll always have critics, and there might even be people out there who are determined to bring you down. But remember that says so much more about who they are as people than who you are. Stay on your own course. We all have the same amount of time in a day, a month, a year.

How you choose to spend your time and energy matters. Some people might choose to spend their time spreading hate, lashing out at people online, trolling people online. But that's not how you are gonna spend your time. 

We all go through at least one Dark Night of the Soul in our life, and it often hits like a battering ram when we least expect it. But it doesn’t come until you have accumulated up until that time all you need to not only survive it but to heal, grow, and then thrive from the experience. Let your Dark Night of the Soul be the rocket fuel that launches you forward.