🎧 My Radical Tipping Point
Written and Narrated by Niyati Kadakia
Press the play button and follow the words with me ❤️
I don’t remember the exact moment I befriended pain.
I don’t remember when I softened my gaze, reached for its hand, and pulled it towards me. I don’t know when I wrapped my arms around it and held on, not out of surrender, but out of recognition, out of choice. But… I have a general idea.
It was sometime after the numbness set in.
For weeks, months, I existed like a rock.
Unmoving.
Unfeeling.
I performed the necessary acts of being alive. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, made coffee, laughed on the phone, attended zoom meetings and even met friends. I moved through time like a body without a soul, stunned by the absolute absurdity of the world continuing on as if nothing had happened. As if I hadn’t been shattered from the inside out.
I remember wondering…
How is it possible to feel so much pain and still survive, still breathe, still get up in the morning and put your feet on the ground, walk, answer emails, order lunch, as if it was just another day. I felt nothing. I got numb, even to my questions.
And then, when I had nowhere else to go - not outwardly or inwardly, I went for a walk. The kind of walk I only take when everything else has stopped working.
The kind that feels like a prayer, like a quiet protest.
I walked until I couldn’t think anymore. Until the world blurred around me and my legs ached. And then, there it was.
A flower. Just by the sidewalk.
Small. Bright. Alive.
I stopped and stared. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Cars passed. People walked by. They looked at the flower too and continued to walk past - But I stood there - silent, still, locked in some quiet communion with this tiny thing that had the audacity to bloom.
And then something broke. So fully…that I swear I heard something crack.
Something vast and silent cracked open inside me.
I walked to the edge of the path, sat on a stump of a tree, and cried.
Not politely. Not discreetly.
I cried the way the earth does when it’s been dry too long. I cried the way oceans remember storms. I cried with everything I had in me.
And in that moment, my pain arrived.
Not as an enemy. Not even as a guest.
It came as if it had always belonged to me.
It swept through me in its full, wild form - untamed, unapologetic.
And I let it come.
That’s the moment, I think. The moment I stopped resisting and met pain in its fullness. Not as something to be fixed or feared or intellectualized - but as something to be felt. Entirely.
It was not the kind of breaking that ruins you.
It was the kind that remakes you.
And when the wave had passed, when I could breathe again, something strange happened -
I looked at myself and I saw someone I deeply loved.
Not romantically. Not idealistically. But truly.
In the way you love a person you’ve walked through fire with.
In the way you love someone who has seen you at your worst and stayed.
I had spent so long trying to be lovable in the eyes of others -
wearing the right masks, saying the right things, shrinking in just the right ways so I wouldn't take up too much space, wouldn't cause too much discomfort or demand too much.
But now - here, ruined and real, trembling on the edge of a city sidewalk - I looked at myself with the eyes of someone who had waited lifetimes to return home.
And I did not flinch. My heart opened like the sky opens for the moon, like the trees invite the breeze into their leaves. I surrendered. I opened. I felt.
That’s what complete annihilation does.
It leaves you with nothing to prove.
No performance left. No script to follow.
Only you - bare, breathing, and utterly undeniable.
Pain did that to me.
It stripped me of everything false, and handed me back my soul.
There is a strange and sacred moment when you realize that no one, no one, is coming to save you -
that this life is fully and completely only your responsibility.
Not your partner’s. Not your children’s. Not your government’s. Not even your God’s.
The responsibility is only yours.
And you get just one life -
one brief, blazing chance - before death holds your hand.
And in that moment, instead of despair, you feel something else entirely -
You feel power. You feel love.
Not the kind of love we are taught to crave. Not the kind that chooses you in public, or shows up with flowers, or buys you a ring and promises to stay.
This was deeper.
This was the kind of love that rises from within you and says:
Even if no one ever chooses you again, I will.
Even if the whole world turns away, I won’t.
This is how I fell in love with myself.
Desperately. Fiercely. Truly.
And yes, pain was the one who brought me there.
Pain - this uninvited guest, this strange companion I tried so long to outrun - ended up becoming the one who held my face in its hands and said:
Look, my love, look!
Look how much you’ve survived.
Look how much you can still feel.
Pain is often mistaken as the opposite of joy.
But I know now - they are one and the same.
Pain is the threshold. Joy is the other side.
But you don’t get to joy by skipping the ache.
You walk straight through it.
And in doing so, you become the kind of person who doesn’t just chase happiness - you become the kind who holds truth.
The kind who knows what’s real - beyond good and bad - just real. Just true.
Because here’s the secret:
Pain doesn’t come to destroy you.
It comes to rearrange you.
To burn away everything that isn’t yours.
To return you to what is.
And what is mine - what has always been mine - is love.
Deep, abiding, unshakeable love.
For this body.
For this spirit.
For this strange, wild, crazy life.
For the purpose that’s been waiting beneath the wreckage.
For the voice that trembled and rose again.
For the tears that flowed and the eyes that still smiled.
For the woman who stayed. Who walked through the fire.
Who bloomed, even when no one was watching.
That is what pain gave me.
And I will never forget it.
Once you have loved pain - not for what it took from you, but for what it gave you -
you are no longer afraid of breaking.
You know now:
you will rise.
And what you rise into will be truer, braver, and more beautiful
than anything you ever imagined.
with so much tenderness and love,
Niyati ❤️
Beautiful!! You have given such a different meaning to Pain. "Pain is the threshold. Joy is the other side." As simple as that. Wonderful. More power to you Niyati!!
Why is it so difficult for women to find self love? It's almost like an act of defiance.
Here's wishing that your work and love finds itself to many others who don't have to walk thru fire to find themselves. Thank you for sharing yourself with us