The Sacred Echo of Soul Love

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Before I fell in love—really fell in love—I thought I was doing life right.

I ticked the boxes. Made my own choices. Believed I was listening to my gut.

But there’s a difference between a gut instinct and a soul cry.

And I’d spent years mistaking one for the other.

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I was hungry all the time—and not just for food.

Hungry for meaning. For magic. For something I couldn’t name.

So I fed myself with noise. Jobs that drained me. Men who couldn’t love me. Wardrobes full of stories I never wanted to tell.

Another glass. Another night. Another plan. Another distraction.

I thought that was intuition.

Really, it was just survival with good branding.

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I didn’t know how starved I really was—until I met him. Until my soul felt seen for the very first time.

And then… one day, he was gone.

Forever.

And suddenly, the pain in my soul was the only thing I could feel.

You learn how important the soul is when you lose half of yours.

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Soul love changes you.

Soul love doesn’t slot neatly into your life. It rearranges it. It breaks open the walls you didn’t know were there. It changes how music sounds. How the sky looks. How silence feels.

It doesn’t matter if you loved them for a month or a decade—you know when your soul has fallen in love.

After that, the life I’d built—the one I’d once called mine—felt hollow. Like wandering through a house I used to live in. Everything technically in its place, but emptied of meaning.

I had built a life, and a Self, that I barely recognise now.

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Nor would the little girl I once was, who used to happily play on her own in the babbling streams and trees of the New Forest. Who would watch a sunset sitting under an ancient Redwood, close her eyes and feel the summer breeze on her face, like a soothing hand from home.

Real home.

I lost that little girl somewhere between trying to belong and trying to disappear. She wasn't built for the world that she was propelled into. She didn’t like a lot of the choices that I made.

And honestly, I don’t blame her.

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It was only in the disorientation of grief that I realised she was still waiting for me, under that Redwood.

I found her lying on the ground, shivering on a threadbare blanket. Her shoes were missing. Her hair, a tangled mess. She was covered in dirt and bruises. Her little fists were clenched so tightly, and all I could see was the silver chain embedded into her palm.

She opened her eyes, as if they were heavier than the whole weight of the world, and whispered...

“He’s gone.”

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It took me a long time to convince her to come down from that hill, away from the tree.

She didn’t believe me at first when I told her I was sorry, and that I would look after her. She turned away when I offered her a blanket and food. She just kept staring into the distance, calling his name over and over again.

So we slept under the tree together, and I held her when she woke in the pitch black, eyes wild with the fear of remembering—before she loosened herself from my embrace in disgust and rolled back over into the darkness.

And so I sat there with her, day after day, dark night after dark night, until one day I woke to the sound of her gently singing to herself, and saw her dancing in the sun in the tall grass, its soft blades flowing through her fingers like water as she slowly spun around.

She stopped, opened her eyes, and looked up at me, the silver chain now hanging around her neck.

“He’s here, isn’t he?” I said.

And she just smiled.