My Story CAN Illuminates What Is Possible For You

When you are searching for a spiritual retreat, deeper meaning, or real inner transformation, it usually doesn’t begin with clarity – it begins with a sense that something in your life no longer feels the way it used to and you are looking for a change.

That was where my journey began too, although at the time I didn’t call it spiritual, awakening, or transformation.

I simply lived my life, made decisions, built things, lost things, and slowly, through experience, I began to understand what it actually means to come back to myself.

If I look back honestly, without trying to make the story sound beautiful or meaningful, I can say that nothing in my life happened the way I thought it would, and at the same time, everything brought me exactly to where I needed to be.

I didn’t start with some special awareness or spiritual understanding. I lived the way most people do – moving forward, making choices, building a life based on what seemed right at the time, believing that if I worked hard enough and achieved enough, happiness would naturally follow. And for certain periods, it did. It really did.

From Ukraine to the United States – The Beginning of My Path

I was born in Ukraine, into a good family, a stable environment, with parents who cared, who provided, who did everything they believed was right. My childhood was  warm and supportive.
After my marriage at 23 and having a beautiful daughter, with my husband’s family we  moved to the United States, stepping into a completely different life where I had to rebuild everything from the ground up – language, environment, understanding, identity.

I didn’t come with a plan. I didn’t even fully understand what I was capable of. I just moved forward, step by step, doing what was in front of me.

When I first arrived, I felt insecure about my English, so I chose something simple. I got a job at Popeyes Chicken in downtown Chicago, thinking I would just learn by being around people. Within a month, I became a manager.
I knew that was not what I was planning to do, but life is life and I lived it with acceptance, but keeping my eyes and my mind open to the new possibilities..

Looking back now, I can see that life was already showing me something about myself – my ability to adapt, to grow quickly, to take responsibility – but at that time, I was not aware enough to recognize it.

Building Success – Real Estate, Business, and Achievement

I tried different things, explored, searched without calling it searching.
Then one small decision shifted everything. A girl I worked with mentioned real estate classes, and I joined almost casually, without expectations.

After passing the exam, I became a realtor, and things started moving quickly.

But what really changed my direction in life was one single phone call.
I still remember it. I decided to try cold calling, even though I didn’t like it, and that one call connected me to a man who introduced me to real estate investing and renovation and trusted me enough to lend me $30,000 for my first project.

At that moment, I didn’t fully understand it, but that was the beginning of something much bigger than just a business. But I remembered my youth dream to become a builder.
And now, this dream started happening in my real life.

I started with one small property, and step by step it grew into more – buildings, developments, larger projects. I was creating something real, something physical, transforming spaces that were broken into places people wanted to live in. Without even realizing it, I stepped into something I once wanted as a child – to build.

To avoid sounding unfounded, you can see Nina’s real estate development projects here.

Years passed, and what began as a simple opportunity turned into a successful business, then into multiple businesses that my second husband and I built together.
We had a large home, cars, a full life, children, friends, constant movement, constant responsibility.

You can see images in the book I wrote back in 2016.

From the outside, it looked like everything was exactly how it should be.

Success Stops Feeling Like Happiness

There was excitement, connection, a sense of building something together.

But over time, something started changing, and it’s very difficult to explain this part unless someone has lived through it themselves. Nothing dramatic happens at first.
Life continued as in many families, but work took over the depth of relationship, stress of trying to achieve (definitely, not a woman’s path – now I know that based on my own experience) started to destroy much deeper layers of real life and connection.

The work that once brought satisfaction starts feeling like pressure.
The connection that once felt natural becomes effort.
The life you built starts feeling like something you have to maintain instead of something you are living.

We didn’t notice it right away. Most people don’t.

And then one day, you realize you are no longer experiencing your life – you are managing it.

Our relationship began to break down slowly. Not because of one event, not because of one mistake, but because of many things that were not seen, not spoken, not understood.
Emotional distance grew. Tension replaced ease.
And at some point, what used to feel like love became something painful, something that drains instead of supports.

At the same time, without us fully understanding it, our internal state began to affect everything else – our decisions, our clarity, our business, our ability to function the way we used to.

By the time the external collapse came – loss of business, financial crises, bankruptcy in 2009 – the real damage had already been done inside.

That period of my life was one of the most difficult. Not only because of what was happening externally, but because I didn’t yet understand what was happening internally. There were questions without answers, emotions that didn’t have a place, a constant feeling of instability.

How Emotional Disconnection in Relationships Impacts Mental Clarity and Financial Stability

It rarely starts with money. It starts much earlier – in what we stop seeing, stop saying, and stop feeling.

Many people know this feeling in family relationships – the moment when everything looks right on the outside, but inside, something essential is missing.

We didn’t lose our happiness because of money.
In fact, it was the opposite – we lost ourselves first, and everything else followed.

One of the hardest lessons I came to understand is that external collapse is often the result of an inner disconnection in what once was a beautiful relationship,  that goes unnoticed for far too long.

When work, achievement, and the constant pressure to succeed begin to take over, relationships slowly lose depth, attention, and presence until connection is replaced by routine and emotional distance.
Over time, this doesn’t just affect a family or a partnership; it starts to impact clarity, decision-making, and the ability to sustain a career or business, often leading to financial losses and instability.

I sometimes refer to this state as living on autopilot – as “zombie”, not as a label, but as a way to describe how it feels when a person becomes disconnected from themselves.
I recognize it because I’ve been there, and I now see the same pattern in many people I work with and encounter in everyday life.

And this is what happened in my life.
When a relationship begins to break down – when communication turns into tension, when unspoken pain accumulates, when emotional distance replaces genuine connection – it does not stay contained within the relationship itself.
That inner instability quietly spreads into every area of life, affecting clarity of thought, decision-making, energy, and ultimately the ability to sustain a business or financial structure.

It is not the loss of money that destroys people – it is the unresolved emotional weight, the constant stress, and the loss of inner alignment that slowly erode the foundation everything else is built upon.

When the inner world is in chaos, the outer world inevitably begins to reflect it.

By the time we lost our businesses and went through financial collapse during the 2008–2009 crisis, the deeper loss had already happened internally

The Beginning of Spiritual Awakening (Without Calling It That)

As I clearly see and know now  everything is happening for a greater good and for me something else starts unfolding.

Not in a logical way, not as a plan – more like being pulled in a direction I didn’t fully understand.

During this one of the most unstable periods of my life, I found myself drawn to completely different things – not through logic, but through experience.

Herbs. Tea. Essential oils. Stones. Energy work.

But these were not just hobbies or random interests.
At some point of my life, all this became tools that helped me go through what I was going through and later to use it in my practice.

I started using them, not just learning about them – for calming myself, for healing, for understanding how my body and emotions respond, for finding moments of balance when everything around me felt unstable.

Through that, I slowly began to reconnect with something I didn’t even realize I had lost.

Myself.

Later, I opened a small shop together with my friend. It was a simple place – spiritual items, jewelry and a  small jewelry school. It was not a big financial success, and eventually we had to close it, but that experience gave me something that no successful business ever gave me before.

It gave me direction.

Not direction in terms of “what to do next” in a practical sense, but direction in understanding what actually matters to me, what feels real, what feels aligned, what I cannot ignore anymore.

From Crisis to Inner Transformation

The transformation I went through was not quick. It took years.
At the beginning, it was confusing, uncomfortable, and at times even frightening, because you start seeing things you didn’t want to see before – patterns, behaviors, truths about yourself.

But over time, understanding came. And when understanding comes, the same process that once felt like suffering starts feeling different. You begin to participate in it consciously.

Now, when I look at my life, I don’t measure it by success the way I used to. I don’t measure it by what I have or don’t have.

I feel free in a way I didn’t understand before.

Not free from life, but free within it.

Connected, aware, stable in a way that doesn’t depend on external conditions the way it used to.

Creating a New Path – Healing, Practice, and Retreat Work

All these years, my spiritual knowledge and experiences have deepened. I continued learning, practicing, and working with people.
Everything I went through, I now use in my work.

Not from theory, but from lived experience.

Over time, this evolved into:

• Personal consultations
• Spiritual practices, seminars and ceremonies
• Wellness and transformation retreats in Costa Rica, Peru, and Europe

Everything I offer today comes from what I have personally lived through, tested, and integrated.

Where I Am Now – A Different Way of Living

The last few years, especially in Costa Rica, brought another level of transformation. The environment, the energy of the land, the space to go deeper – it all supported a process that is difficult to describe in simple words.

What I experience now doesn’t feel like just another stage.

It feels like I am living a completely different life, without changing the body, without starting over externally, but internally – everything is different.

Why This Story Could Matters for You

This story is not here to teach, not to convince, not to position myself in any way.

It is here because many people who come to retreats, healing work, or spiritual exploration are not starting from curiosity – they are starting from a place where something no longer feels right.

If you recognize that feeling, then you are already on your path.

And sometimes, that is enough to begin.

And maybe you don’t need all the answers right now.

Maybe you just need to continue, a little more honestly, a little more aware, a little more willing to see what is actually there.

That’s where everything begins.

Whether you are going through a life transition, emotional burnout, relationship challenges, or simply feel disconnected from yourself, this is exactly where real transformation begins and you may be able to find support, healing and more clarity on our retreats or other practices..

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No pressure, no expectations – just a space to begin.