For years, I lived a life that looked successful on the outside but felt suffocating on the inside. Working in global banking and fintech, I thrived in a high-pressure, male-dominated world—chasing deadlines, managing risk and ticking all the “success” boxes.

Yet, beneath it all, I was battling something much deeper.

I was trapped in a marriage that was eroding my spirit. And worse, I carried immense shame about it.

Growing up in an Indian household and community, I had absorbed the silent but heavy stigma around divorce. To leave a marriage—no matter how painful—felt like failing, like I would become "that woman" people whispered about. The isolation was unbearable. I felt like I had nowhere to turn, no one who could truly understand. So, I did what I had always done—I pushed through, buried my emotions and kept achieving.

But the weight of that shame, the loneliness, the disconnection from my true self—it all became too heavy to ignore.

Walking away from my marriage was supposed to bring me freedom. And in many ways, it did. But because I wasn’t fully connected to myself— I didn’t yet understand my deep people-pleasing tendencies—I unknowingly walked into an even darker place.

In my search for healing, I found a community that, on the surface, felt like home. They welcomed me, supported me and made me feel like I belonged.  After years of feeling unseen, this felt like love.

But it wasn’t.

Beneath the warmth and devotion, there was control. Fear disguised as love. Power wielded under the guise of spiritual truth.

Without even realising it, I had entered a religious cult.

At first, I didn’t see the manipulation. The slow erosion of my self-trust. The way my autonomy was quietly stripped away in the name of faith. I convinced myself I was in the right place—that I was growing, healing, becoming more enlightened. But in reality, I was losing myself.

For almost four years, I was more disconnected from myself than ever before. I had escaped one prison, only to step into another.