In the world today, we have instruction guides for math, for writing an essay, for growing our businesses on Instagram, and for attracting our ideal mates.

We can find thousands of recipes online, a step-by-step guide for grooming our dogs, we can learn how to make wreaths, and follow the 12 steps. There is a vast array of information of how to get from here to there and stories of success depicted everywhere.

What seems to be missing is that step-by-step guide that will tell us what to do when everything in our life is crumbling, when we are too sad or sick to go on, when our mom dies, the love of our life leaves suddenly because he wants to have sex with someone else (or already has), our friend is murdered spontaneously in the grocery store, a disgruntled client decides to single-handedly take it upon themselves to destroy our hard-earned business, and our canine companion of the last 13 years is in her last days on earth and we can’t be there to hold her or say goodbye.

There seem to be these phases in life where drama has taken over and our will to live is challenged in every breath we take. Where relief occurs only a short while later to crumble again with the next piece of unfortunate information that we get a phone call about. We spend thousands of dollars seeking professional help without any of it landing in the place where it feels like it’s doing much of anything other than causing our money to disappear faster which was already happening because we can’t work and are barely functioning due to stress.

We feel that we can’t call our friends anymore because we’ve already spent hours processing with them and we are trying to hold our group program together without seeming weak or like we aren’t destined to lead but according to the constant chatter in our minds, our sh*t currently outshines any brilliance we might have once thought we had to offer.

People say things to try and help, “Stay Strong,” “This too shall pass,” or “There is light on the other side.” But when that doesn’t seem to land or help, we begin to hear things such as, “You are manipulating us with your feelings,” “You are a victim, why don’t you show us your queen,” “How long are you going to blame this event for your sorrow,” and, “Your drama outshines your power.”

We can feel people who were normally a part of our support system slowly backing away from us energetically until we can’t feel them at all.

We ask for help, our arms are outstretched, our inner child is begging to be loved, and all we hear is the whispers of nothingness. The people around us offer words of sympathy and empathy, but none of them are actually feeling us and what we are going through which leaves those words feeling empty and unsupportive.

No one tells us what to do when we wake up every day crying and a memory can set off a whole new tidal wave of grief. They don’t teach us in school how choosing to love the wrong person for the wrong reasons can end up in a world of hurt and require months to years of recovery. No one lets us know that what we experienced as a child in our earliest years of innocence would be the same thing that still haunts us in our 30s, poisoning every relationship that we have—leaving us feeling desperate and alone over and over again.

What are we supposed to do when our hearts are so broken that we’ve lost our will to live and thoughts of slitting our wrists sneak into our heads from time to time—as if death would offer the relief that this convoluted “love” that we’ve been programmed to give one another in this lifetime cannot?

Everyone talks about the light these days. Lightworkers are everywhere in our media saying, “Choose love,” and “Your frequency is creating it all—so change your frequency and you will feel better.”

We all know how well that works when our hearts have been smashed into a million pieces and our tears are choking us to death and the pain is so sharp we can barely breathe let alone find the strength to shift our entire paradigm.

Where are the individuals who can act as guides for us through the darkness?

We have thoughts about how if they could feel what we felt, then they might not find holding space for our emotions to be so difficult compared to what we are having to go through ourselves.

Why didn’t anyone ever tell us that Earth was going to be so painful, so messy, and so desperately lonely even though we can’t even go outside without running into one of the other seven billion people who live here?

Is this what Jesus was really teaching us as he died on the cross? That we can incarnate and be a divine being with the purest love and intentions to help guide humanity to a new way of being and that because of it we will be projected upon, betrayed, cast out, stoned, and inevitably hung for our “crimes” against humanity and the greater public.

Oh, but there is hope. After we are effectively dead, we will rise again—a bridge between heaven and earth, free of our earthly turmoil. Um, hello, Jesus, some of us could really use that manual on awakening right about now. In reality, Pheonix’s are known for burning themselves up in a fiery inferno and then being born again, much like dying on a cross only to soon after rise into heaven.

In the middle of a dark day of the soul, it often just feels like we are sinking lower and deeper into the darkness as our egos crumble with all the pieces of our life that we used to love. Nothing helps us feel better, our normal life hack tools and resources fall short of being able to cause the shift that we know we need. No matter how many self-help books we read or counselors we talk to, we still aren’t feeling the relief that we know we deserve. Some people might say to us, “Time heals all.”

Time actually seems to give us more things from which to heal.

We find ourselves wondering, does this happen to other people, or am I just the unluckiest person on the planet?

It seems as though we are clearly broken, they messed up the codes with us, we will probably suffer like this for the rest of our lives, and then die alone since no one in our lives seems to survive our dark days but us.

When we experience a dark day of the soul, we get to see who is really there for us and who just can’t hang. We might lose all of our friends and stop making money.

We are the only ones who can get ourselves out. We must get out, but unfortunately, for us, there are no manuals or step-by-step guides on how to survive a dark day of the soul. In a dark day of the soul, we will do everything in our power to climb out of the dark abyss only to peek our heads over the surface and go tumbling back into our own darkness.

Dear Universe, will you please task someone to create the training guide for dark days already?

Oh, never mind, it probably won’t work anyway.