©️ By Sophie Lewis | @sophielewiseditorial

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I didn’t just survive the last two years. I walked through fire, fed it every illusion I had left, and came out with steel in my spine.

I wanted more. Not the kind of more you can pull off a shelf or tick off a vision board. I wanted the kind that rewires your days and makes your bones feel like they finally belong to you. I thought I knew where to find it. I thought it lived in the work that made the most noise, in the people who called themselves my people, in the goals that gleamed just enough to keep me chasing.

So I chased. I poured hours, loyalty, and fight into those places. I traded my time, my reputation, my health. And for two years I paid into a false economy.

“Rooms don’t crown you. You crown yourself, then decide who earns proximity.”

The price wasn’t just money, though that bled away fast enough. It came in late nights with my chest tight from the comments, in carrying six roles because three were underfunded, in building for others while my own work sat waiting. It came in silence from people who swore they’d be there. In politics that had nothing to do with truth and everything to do with control. In being useful until I wasn’t, and then disposable the second I drew a boundary.

But those two years didn’t break me. They stripped me. They burned through every illusion I had about who I was, what my work was worth, and where my life was going.

I learned that visibility isn’t value. Going viral doesn’t mean impact. Noise isn’t reach. I learned that work isn’t worth if it costs you your centre. That my people is something you prove in actions, not words. That boundaries aren’t vibes. They’re infrastructure. If you don’t write them down and hold them, someone else will decide them for you.

“I don’t write for the algorithm. I write for memory.”

In that time, I built things that will outlast every false alliance I ever said yes to. I created The Predator Paradox, mapped the exposure-seeking predator before academia had a name for it, and turned it into something citable, teachable, impossible to ignore. I built Shadowborn, not as a pretty package but as a living practice, a 12-week descent and return with ritual, somatics, and nervous-system-safe shadow work. I exposed patterns in predator behaviour that went far beyond the individual and into the architecture that enables them. I stood in front of institutional failures, prison food crises, survivor silence, and political theatre, and I told the truth when it would have been easier not to.

While the work sharpened, I changed. My anger learned how to move without driving. My grief learned how to sit without taking me hostage. My tenderness stopped feeling like a liability and started feeling like a currency I protect.

I stopped asking rooms to crown me. I crowned myself, and now I decide which rooms even get a knock on the door.

I don’t do unpaid expertise dressed up as opportunity anymore. I don’t perform pain for engagement. I don’t sell my silence to make anyone comfortable. I don’t explain myself to bad-faith actors just to keep the peace.

I charge for the depth because the depth saves time, prevents harm, and shifts outcomes. I work to clear terms, clear scope, and clear exits. I write for memory, not the algorithm.

“The hate made me precise. The silence made me sober. The betrayals made me surgical.”

My people, the real ones, were never the loudest. They were the ones sending voice notes when I was about to publish. The ones who brought water when the fire hit. The ones who didn’t disappear when the drama went quiet. They are not perfect. They are present. They know how to hear no and stay at the table.

I’ve seen what happens when you feed a false economy. How it grows fat on your energy and then tells you you’re the one in debt. I’ve closed that account for good.

Those two years were a forge. The hate made me precise. The silence made me sober. The betrayals made me surgical. And the love, the quiet and ordinary kind, made me braver than I have ever been.

“I am building the house with its own light, its own rules, and a table for people who bring firewood.”

I am not knocking on doors anymore. I am building the house with its own light, its own rules, and a table for people who bring firewood, not just stories about winter.

If you’re here for the real thing, welcome. If you’re here for theatre, the door is that way.

I wanted more. I became more. And I will never pay into a false economy again.

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If you’re ready to step into your own forge – Shadowborn isn’t a course you tick off. It’s a 12-week descent and return, a way to burn through the illusions, meet your shadow without flinching, and come back with your own crown. 🌑

Learn more here: Shadowborn 🌑🌕