The Surprising Way I Tapped Into My Purpose: Stories That Shaped Me Pt. 2

I’m sharing the raw story of a party era that looked fun and free, plus the two moments that finally forced me to face the truth: I wasn’t respecting my body, my boundaries, or my bigger purpose, and life started reflecting that back to me in the loudest ways possible.

We get into the spiritual energetic law of reflections and how it shows up when you’re off path, settling, or numbing out. I talk about codependency, betrayal, and a DC rave night that left me waking up in my car with no memory, no friends answering, and a shame spiral waiting at the door. There’s also an important distinction I stand by: radical responsibility is not self-blame, and it never means staying close to people who harmed you. It’s about finding the place where you can reclaim your power and start treating yourself like someone you’re here to protect.

From there, I walk you through the turning point that changed everything: refusing to let depression swallow me, feeding my mind with higher-frequency learning, and letting purpose replace chaos. If you’re into manifestation, energy healing, higher self alignment, nervous system support, and real-life spiritual growth, this story will help you spot what your life might be trying to mirror back to you right now. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find the work.

Transcript

Welcome To Conscious Glow Up

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Do you ever get the feeling that you're destined for an even bigger, bolder, more magical life? Welcome to the Conscious Glow Up. I'm your host, intuitive energy healer and coach, Crystal Ward. My goal is to help you create the life you fantasize about by teaching you energetic spiritual laws of the universe and neuroscience tools. I'll share how I utilize these teachings in my own life with stories of single motherhood, entrepreneurship, finances, and relationships. Let's dive on into the depths of consciousness and glow up from the inside out. Alrighty guys, I promised you a nice peek into my Party Girl rock bottom event. It's not as drastic as some rock bottoms, I know this, but this situation had the potential to be a lot worse, and I knew that. And for me at the time, this was a hardcore level 10 situation. I lost all my friends in one night, but for all of it, I am very grateful. I mean, wow, my team of guides was really looking out for me that night because my human self was not. If you're new here, welcome to the conscious glow-up. I'm Crystal Ward, your host and intuitive energy healer and life coach. I help people have the lives they want by using scientifically trained intuition to give precise direction from source, our creator, and your higher self, along with the coaching method to drop you into your personal power. And I use the Scientific Energetic Laws of the Universe to help you manifest with more ease and less frustration. What I love about the laws of the universe is that they prove just how powerful each of us is. If you're new here, welcome. I am a pretty new podcast, but I love looking at my stats and seeing the locations that people are finding me in. I have been listened to on all continents except for Antarctica

A Quick Rating Request

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so far. And if you've been here for a few episodes and you have been enjoying it and getting something out of it, then I would be so grateful if you could rate the podcast on whatever app you use so that I can grow and continue sharing life-changing messages to even more people.

Trigger Warning And Night In DC

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Okay, so what the heck happened on that February night in DC at a DATSIC rave? First, let me back up and let me warn you, there will be some explicit content, and here is your trigger warning for sexual abuse. So I was heavy in my rave girl era. I didn't wear the beads up to my elbows, but my brain loved going to EDM shows all the time. I'd go to three shows a week sometimes and every festival that I could afford, which was a lot at the time because I was part of the opening team at MGM Casino at National Harbor in Maryland. I worked at the steakhouse and we were making like six hundred dollars a night, give or take, on average, every night. I bought and paid off a car in a year and three months and only paid $38 total in interest. The money was amazing, so I had the funds to basically do whatever I wanted. I lived in a swanky apartment, just me and my cat in Alexandria. It was so swanky with paper thin walls that I often got noise complaints for walking across the floor or showering, and my cat even got a noise complaint one time. I was at the store and got a call from the front desk about the person below me saying I was making too much noise. I also got some other complaints, such as smoking. It was a time, I tell you, it was a fun time. We're gonna back up now, and this is all related to the core message of this episode. The core message I will just give you now, and you will see how it played out in my life. The concept I'm going to share, I actually had no idea about in 2017 and 2018 when this all took place. I actually learned this concept less than a year ago, and it has truly opened my eyes to what powerful creators we are and how much our higher self wants and needs us to be on path on the life our soul came here to complete. My life has some big shit my higher self wants me to do, including helping tons of people with the business that I run and what my business is evolving into, which I was pretty far from during this era that I'm going to tell you about. Hence all the shit that was thrown in my face in order to get me on path. The concept

The Spiritual Law Of Reflections

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and the lesson here in this episode is about the spiritual energetic law of reflections. It's a goody, it's a doozy, but if you can get behind this concept and see how it is playing out in your life every single day, you are gonna start treating yourself with a lot more love and respect. Which is exactly what my lesson was from this story number two in this three-part series that I'm doing on stories that changed my life. It

Betrayal That Ended Codependency

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was June or July in 2017 when the reflection of disrespecting my body and life hit me real hard. I had been living with my best friend John for three years. He had always been in love with me, but to me he was my best friend. We did everything together. I had met him on his brief work breaks just to have coffee, talk, or smoke a bowl. I meet him like every day, probably multiple times a day sometimes. We went to all the shows together, and by that I mean raves, all the festivals. It was a very great time. We basically partied every day wherever we lived, and we always lived with roommates who were just as down for a good time as we were. Well, I was not on the path that my higher self designed for me in this life. I graduated from college with a writing degree in 2014, but I had convinced myself shortly after graduating that it was okay to just not use my degree. That it was okay to just be a server. I actually wanted to move near Sedona, Arizona after college. I had no kid yet and a blank slate to create the life I wanted. And that was the first problem. My higher self knew that I was settling in my life by taking the job I was offered at MGM, and even though I was making amazing money, I was living for the weekend, or even living for every weeknight, when there was a rave at Soundcheck Club in DC. I was working and partying. I gave up well, I didn't completely give up, obviously, here we are today, but at the time I had given up my dream of moving to Arizona and I had wanted to be a travel writer and just thought, okay, well, writers don't make that much money, so I'll I'm good with just working and partying. And I had no idea at the time that my job in this lifetime was to help people, even though most of my friends and co-workers came to me for advice all the time. I was basically treating myself like a kid. Looking back now, all the debauchery was a big off-path situation, and deep down I knew it. So commence all the biggest reflections my life has still ever had to this day, probably. The June or July reflection event happened one night after I had taken some Percocet that I was given after emergency ovarian cyst removal surgery, and having had a good amount of wine. And, you know, definitely shouldn't have. And by that time, for so long, I had been disrespecting my body with the endless partying that I was doing all day, every day, for years on end by that point, basically by the time I had since I graduated. But I was very functional. I was an incredible server and employee, but once I clocked out, it was purely playtime. It was time, though, that I stopped disrespecting myself. So the reflection hit hard. Again, I didn't understand the law of reflections that how we are treating ourselves, others will treat us. But just because I didn't know about that universal law didn't mean that I was exempt from it. I disrespected myself enough, so it was time to be as violated and disrespected by someone else in my life where the message would be loud and fucking clear. I was violated in the worst way by my up until then best friend. I was passed out on the wine and percocet in my own bed. Long story short, I moved out into that apartment I mentioned in Alexandria, and I had actually been very, very codependent up until then, and so was John. If I wasn't hanging out with him, which was all the time, like I said, because we would feed off of each other's codependency, then I would make sure I would have plans to hang out with either whoever my boyfriend was at the time or friends. I hated being alone. But what that situation with him that night did for me was completely reverse my codependency. I ended up thriving, living alone, because I learned how to just enjoy time with myself. It first started with watching Netflix by myself, something I had never given myself the space to do. And then I started working out by myself, which I had never done before. I would only go to the gym or on runs with other people like friends or my roommates. And then I started writing blogs. I got myself a desk, and then I realized, whoa, I think I have something to share with the world. I didn't quite put my finger on it yet, but the idea was awakened within me. The whole situation with John was on a very high conscious level and a perspective that I can only see after the fact, it was perfect. If John hadn't violated me, would I have ever cured my codependency? Would I have ever given myself the alone time to write, which led me to figuring out that I actually have a soul path career outside of being a restaurant server. But that wasn't even the rock bottom moment, though.

The Rave Night Rock Bottom

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If you listened to the last episode, story one, of Stories That Shaped Me, then you heard the teaser about the event that was in DC. Not in my own bed at home, like the other situation. So fast forward again, this was now February 2018. I had dropped John as a friend, obviously. So by then I was always hanging out with a group of Ray friends who he actually introduced me to, but who had also dropped him as their friend after what happened to me. And they were very good to me. I mean, so good. It was amazing to be part of a group of people who were definitely like family, until they weren't. Without spending too much time going into all the details, but giving you enough information so that you understand the dynamic. There were a few cousins in the group, three of them. Two guys, and one of the guys had a sister. And since I met them, I had a little crush on one of the guys, but he didn't want to upset the dynamic of the group and make things weird, so he refused to date me, and I totally understood it and everything was cool. But after some time, his cousin Andy and I started talking a lot over text, and we ended up becoming really into each other. We had a really cool vibe. And after all of that came out to the group, then everything changed. His cousin, the one I thought I had originally liked, apparently got jealous. So here's a part about knowing your body and always treating it with respect. I knew that if I drank alcohol, things would go south if I didn't eat first. And I thought south just meant, you know, getting way too drunk and then probably puking later. And that goes for everyone. I'm not a special unicorn, you know, if we don't first eat food and balance our blood sugar before putting toxins in it, especially alcohol, then there will be consequences. So there was a DATSIC show at Echo Stage, which was my favorite nightclub, Rave Place in DC, and that was even my nickname at work was Echo Stage. A few days before that show, Andy vocalized to me that he was nervous to take things to a more serious level with me because of his cousin and the whole group dynamic thing. But that time that actually crushed me. And I remember before the show, I was at work finishing up the shift, and there were some uh Parker house rolls and mac and cheese and cream spinach that you know people were sharing, and I was looking at it and telling myself, like I'll always remember looking at those Parker rolls, thinking, you should eat this, you should definitely eat this because you know you're about to get drunk tonight, but I said no because my heart hurt and I just couldn't stomach the thought of eating anything. But what I could stomach, I thought, was endless gin and cranberries at the club. I don't know how many I ended up having, and I'm sure I mixed a few patron shots in there as well. How was I treating myself? Horribly. I was disrespecting myself. I was disrespecting my body. We all had plans to hang out after the show, but after a while I realized that everybody had ditched me. I texted them and did not hear anything back. The last things I remember were headbanging near the rail with some pretty cool random people. And then I remember waking up in the driver's seat of my car, which was parked at the hotel right next to the club. And this was, as they call it, the bad part of DC. And actually that night when I got to the club, people were talking about a girl at a show the previous weekend who was violated, we'll say, in the same way that I recently was by John after the show down the road somewhere. So I knew in my awareness that really anything was possible there, which is why I am so grateful that my guides did not let anything like that happen to me. Anything like that or worse. When I woke up, it was six o'clock in the morning. I was still pretty hammered. My keys were in the ignition, my car was unlocked, I was buckled, but thank the Lord I passed out in my seat before going anywhere. I have no memory of anything after the headbanging. So I drove home. I tried calling and texting Andy, but he refused to answer. So I ended up texting his cousin, the original guy who I thought I had a crush on, named Danny, and he told me it was best that I don't contact anyone in the group ever again. I was so confused and so sad. Someone else in the group later told me that Danny had told everyone, including Andy, that I was kissing Danny's neck at the show. And that was something I did not remember at all, and I was still conscious and making memories until after I realized the group left, and I for sure would have remembered that, and I for sure would not have done that because of how into Andy I was. And I was hurt, and Andy was hurt. And two years later, Andy actually messaged me to let me know that I was right all along. It never actually happened, that Danny was just jealous, so he lied to the entire group about it so that he could get me out of the picture. That was a huge level 10 reflection for me. How I translate this is that because I was lying to myself about my capabilities and my potentials in my life, thinking that I couldn't make money with my degree, so never pursuing anything in the field, I was a big match to someone else lying about me. And there were many, many smaller reflections, knowing what I know about reflections now that led up to that. But because I didn't know about reflections, I was not aware that everything that was happening to me was just part of that storybook reflection, and then it got, you know, as loud as possible. And it was my biggest rock bottom that I have ever had, waking up like that in my car, driving back home, even though I was still intoxicated, losing my best friend about half a year before that, and then losing basically the rest of the people who I spent most of my time with and had grown to really cherish and love. So,

Choosing Not To Spiral

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why does this event go into this series of stories that shaped me? I was no stranger to depression. I had spent most of my middle school and teenage years in depressive state. There were so many things I had gone through and lived on a daily basis that kept me in a pretty low vibration consistently. But by this time, life had gotten a lot more fun, obviously, and I wasn't depressed anymore. I felt that, you know, feeling after this event happened, I felt that feeling of kind of like a dark blanket of depression that knocks on life's door when things feel like they can't get any worse. And after the dad's show, I felt that blanking asking me to cover myself in it. But something in me that time knew that I should not let that blanket consume me. And I will never forget standing there in my apartment kitchen, making the decision, even just it was just a few days after the show, and I told that depression that wanted to be there, I told it no. And despite feeling more alone than ever before, despite feeling so ashamed for what I still thought I had done at the show, I made a vow to myself to let this be a turning point in my life. I actually even went to some AA meetings. I thought, okay, maybe I have alcoholism, but quickly learned that I didn't have alcoholism, I just had a problem. So when I made the decision not to let depression consume me, I knew that I had to divert my attention. And I hadn't really listened to podcasts much before that moment, but something inside me told me to go to Spotify and put in the search bar productivity podcasts. I clicked the first one that called out to me called Becoming Superhuman by Jonathan Levy. He interviewed people in many industries, mainly focusing on health, productivity, and living a life of purpose. And I cleaned the shit out of my apartment that day, and cleaning is something I still like to do when I'm stressed, and I listened to at least three of his episodes back to back. And then I spent three years binging his podcast. I stopped really listening to music and just listened to people who had very much higher frequency information that I was used to and soaking it all in. I became the most productive, positive version of myself I had ever been. Listening to becoming superhuman awakened an entirely new identity within me. And from that place, I was able to connect to my actual life's purpose. I became obsessed with health through that podcast, and I eventually enrolled in certification to become a health and life coach.

Radical Responsibility Without Self-Blame

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What Danny did was pretty fucked up, but I know now, especially as I'm in my mentor Alessandro's class on Reflections Mastery, that Danny was simply playing a villain role in my life, just as my friend John was playing when he violated me. Souls don't come here with no plan, and both of those souls I do believe were supposed to play the exact role that they did. I believe that in other lifetimes, John especially, and I have had various types of relationships and friendships and family dynamics. I believe that we probably help each other to some degree with soul growth in every lifetime, and it's weird because his last name is Ward in and mine is Ward, and people always thought we looked like siblings. So I don't know, I feel like there's probably something deeper there. But what he did to me in this lifetime was the worst thing he could have done to me other than murder me. But I have to appreciate what he did and what Danny did because both of those events led me to not only being a coach, but that coach path has gotten me closer to my actual life's mission and career of being an intuitive energy healer. So thank you, John, and thank you, Danny. I see now how the disrespect they both gave me was simply mirroring the major disrespect I was giving to myself. Those events changed me at the core in the moment and shaped me into who I am today. And now I have actually helped people who have gone through the exact or very similar situations. So as I help myself heal, I help other people heal. We are treated by people how we treat ourselves so that we can see how it makes us feel, and with radical responsibility, we can take ownership. But I am in zero way saying to stay friends with perpetrators. But what I am offering is to see how we are treating ourselves in similar ways. It won't be the exact same thing that they do or did to us that we are doing to ourselves, but in some way we are limiting ourselves in the same kind of way in at least one of the areas of life. These were heavy experiences for me to live and to reshare with you, but I am seeking no sympathy whatsoever. I am simply showing you the core message that we can take what is happening to us so that we can look inside, look within ourselves, and shift what we need to shift so that we can align ourselves to our most powerful and aligned versions of ourselves so that we can make sure we are on the path that we are supposed to be on. This work and these concepts aren't for everyone, and I know that the ego can resist it pretty hard. I'm not asking you to go in your life and tell yourself and show yourself where you are guilty for shit that's happened to you. For now, I am just offering that when we are off path, it will become distinctly clear and to use that to your advantage. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and thank you for having an open mind.

Next Story Teaser And Closing

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I will see you next episode for story number three that shaped who I am today. It has to do with becoming rooted to my mission, learning how to have my own back when it comes to my authenticity and what I believe and how I choose to live my life. It will be a powerful message, especially in this day and age when it is customary to only feel like you are allowed to have the same opinions and beliefs as everyone else. But if you found this podcast, my hunch is that you are not meant to blend in. You are meant to stand in your true authenticity and have your own back at all times.