The Art of Alchemy

There are people who inherit blueprints.

And there are those of us who learn to build while the house is burning.

I have raised myself — more than once.

Not in theory, not in metaphor,

but in the quiet, relentless practice of becoming

someone I could trust.

Refusing to settle for the story that “this is just who I am,”

and digging deep to discover the potential that was waiting underneath.

I’ve built and rebuilt and rebuilt myself from the inside out.

Each time with fewer illusions,

and a deeper sense of who I was meant to be.

That’s what alchemy really is—

not magic, but devotion.

The slow transmutation of what was meant to break you

into what finally makes you whole.

It begins when you stop waiting for rescue

or living in excuses

and start listening to the embers—

to the part of you that still glows under the ruin,

whispering: use this.

I’ve learned to melt grief until it softens into wisdom,

to turn loneliness into listening,

to hammer shame into boundaries that shine.

Every collapse has been a classroom.

Every loss, a set of instructions written in smoke.

Each time, I’ve built again—

not to erase what was,

but to honor what remains.

Self-parenting, for me, has meant raising the woman I became—

teaching her how to rest without guilt,

how to speak without shrinking,

how to hold grief and gratitude in the same breath

and still believe in the goodness of life despite everything.

Alchemy is not about pretending the pain was purpose.

It’s about turning toward it,

mining it,

finding the shimmer in the dark.

Over time, I stopped seeing my scars as proof of damage

and started seeing them as constellations—

a map of every place I’ve already alchemized into wisdom.

What I’ve been practicing all these years

is not survival.

It’s sacred reconstruction—

the art of seeing myself

as both the fire and the gold.

This is the art of alchemy:

taking what tried to destroy you

and using it as the map

that leads you to the gold

that was always there,

waiting to be found.