“Everything Happens for a Reason” — Faith That Holds, Not a Silencer
By Temple Franklin — Mind Body Spirit Hygiene Tools
Hello Lovely, I want to open up a conversation about something that sounds like a contradiction — the space between toxic positivity and the soul’s journey. I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe it from the soul’s perspective — that every chapter counts, that the hard ones are learning experiences and not just wreckage, that my Divine Team has never once wasted a moment of my life, even the ones that brought me to my knees. And I will never — never — say that sentence to a woman who is bleeding. Both of those things are true. This post is about how.
The same words. Two completely different acts.
Picture a woman a year into her grief. She’s sitting on her porch with her coffee, and she says, quietly, mostly to herself: “I’ve come to believe there was a reason in all of it. My soul needed this chapter.” That sentence is sacred. It’s meaning-making. She descended into the valley, she felt every mile of it, and she came back up carrying something. Nobody handed it to her. She found it. Now picture the same woman three weeks after the loss. Cracked open. Telling the truth, tears on the table. And someone leans in and says: “Well — everything happens for a reason.” Same words. Completely different act. Because now the reason is being assigned to her. From outside. Before she’s been witnessed. Her pain got skipped, and in its place she was handed a conclusion she hasn’t earned yet — a conclusion that quietly says your grief is a misunderstanding of the plan, so you can stop now. The first sentence is faith. The second is a silencer with a spiritual accent.
The rule underneath it
Here is the cleanest way I can say it: Meaning must be discovered by the griever. It can never be delivered to her. From the soul’s perspective, there may absolutely be a reason. I believe there is. But only she gets to find it — on her timeline, in her own voice, after the feeling has been fully felt. The reason is the treasure at the bottom of the valley. You cannot airlift someone to the treasure. The valley IS the way. And when someone hands her the reason early? That’s rarely about her soul. It’s about their discomfort. Her pain is loud, and the sentence turns the volume down — for them. That is the quiet violence of toxic positivity: it almost always sounds like faith, like love, like wisdom. It just arrives at the wrong time, from the wrong mouth, doing the wrong job.
“Good vibes only” — same lesson, different sentence
While we’re here, let me take the pressure off another phrase. In my house, “good vibes” means something specific: you are welcome here — and the drama stays on the porch. No gossip. No recreational negativity. That’s not toxic positivity. That’s a boundary. It protects space and peace. But “good vibes only,” said to a woman mid-grief? That’s not a boundary anymore. That’s a door closed on a person. It silences a feeling. One protects a space. One silences a person. The words don’t decide which one it is — the timing and the target do.
How to hold real faith — without bypassing yourself or anyone
Suggestions as you walk through it: • Witness first. “This is hard. I’m here.” Let her pain be fully true, with no renovation plans. • Feel it all the way through. Hers or yours. A feeling doesn’t need fixing. A feeling needs witnessing. All of it counts. All of it is data. • Let the meaning come last — and let it be hers. If there’s a reason, her soul will find it. It might take a year. It might take ten. When she says it out loud one day, on her own porch, in her own voice — it will hold, because she built it. This is the same order I teach with I GET TO. First the truth: “I am devastated. Nothing about this is okay.” Then — and only then — the wider frame: “AND I GET TO be the one who loved her. I GET TO grieve. Grief is the receipt of love.” The frame never replaces the feeling. It holds it. Faith works exactly the same way. Faith that skips the feeling is a bypass. Faith that holds the feeling is a home.
What to say instead
When someone you love is in the valley and everything in you wants to hand her the reason — Wait. That urge is yours, not hers. Then try: • “This is hard. I’m here.” • “That’s a real loss. You are welcome to tell me about her if that feels right to you.” • “It’s okay that this hurts.” • “You don’t have to make sense of this today.” And if the faith in you insists on speaking, let it say this: “I believe there’s meaning in everything — and I believe it will find you when you’re ready. Until then, I’m not going anywhere.” That sentence witnesses AND believes. It holds the soul’s perspective without using it as a hurry-up.
The porch, a year later
Because here’s the ending I actually believe in. One day she’s on the porch with her coffee. The grief has become something she carries instead of something that carries her. And she says it — quietly, in her own voice, to no one in particular: “There was a reason in all of it.” Nobody handed it to her. Nobody rushed her there. The people who loved her just kept showing up, kept witnessing, holding space — and let her soul do its own human excavation. That’s the version of “everything happens for a reason” I believe in. Discovered, never delivered. Earned, never assigned. Hers.
May you be witnessed all the way through your valleys. May no one hand you a reason before you’re ready. And may the meaning, when it comes, be entirely your own. With love — Temple Real tools. Real women. In the messy middle.
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