Soul Talk and Psychic Advice

Beyond “Everything Happens For A Reason”: Cause, Effect, And Honest Healing

• Dr. Donna • Season 1 • Episode 22

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The phrase “everything happens for a reason” can sound soothing, but it often shuts down grief and pressures us to mine pain for lessons that aren’t there. We open up a more honest path: letting life be messy and unfair while still choosing meaning that supports real healing. From personal loss to everyday setbacks, we separate cause and effect from cosmic purpose and talk about why forcing a story can deepen suffering.

We also clean up the definition of karma. It’s not revenge or cosmic payback; it’s pattern, feedback, and awareness over time. Sometimes the echo teaches, sometimes it blesses, and often it has nothing to do with tragedy at all. By dropping punishment narratives, we make space for responsibility where it belongs and compassion where it’s needed. That shift frees us from shame about not manifesting a perfect life and helps us build boundaries that interrupt repeating harm.

If you’ve ever felt broken by loss, blamed by spiritual clichés, or stuck searching for answers that won’t arrive, this conversation offers relief and direction. We share a gentle grounding practice, practical ways to honor grief, and examples of chosen meaning—therapy, community, and self-respect—that turn survival into quiet strength. Subscribe, share with someone who needs real comfort, and leave a review to tell us: what meaning are you choosing now?

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Hello, it's Dr. Donna, and welcome to another episode of my podcast, Soul Talk and Psychic Advice. Let's talk about the discussion of everything happens for a reason. I really don't like that phrase at all. I've lived long enough to know better. And maybe everything's happened because it's cause and effect, but is it always some divine spiritual reason? No. And I'm gonna dive into why I believe that not everything happens for a reason. I never really believed it. And after talking to clients for 25 years, I know better. I know that sometimes it's just cause and effect, or sometimes awful things happen. And I have been in the world of spirituality probably for gee, almost well, about 25, 26 years now. And I've gone to a lot of seminars, read a lot of books, followed a lot of gurus, I've done it all. And I know we like to explain things spiritually when it doesn't make sense logically. Because there's this belief that there's going to be some type of inner peace if we have a spiritual reason why something happened. But I've seen people drive themselves crazy and stress themselves out looking for answers to something that happened. And sometimes you just have to let that go. You really do. And you know, we've heard people say everything happens for a reason. It's all part of the plan. Karma will take care of it. Um, and you know, karma is very misused. I will discuss karma in this podcast, but I think I need to do a whole separate podcast on just karma. Karma isn't always about something bad or writing the wrong. Karma teaches, not punishes, but karma is also very good, right? We see good things happen to people because they are good. We see people get blessed. So karma's not always negative, and I know I need to discuss that more. So this happened, this situation happened to teach you something like what? I even had some crazy person say that to me when my son died. What's it gonna teach me? My son's life helped me to be me. You know, if anything, him living taught me a lot. And we have to stop doing this, and I think sometimes people do this because if they think it happens for some divine reason, maybe that bad thing won't happen to them. It could be a form of deflection, you know, when we tell people crazy stuff like, oh, this was a lesson that you needed. And can we stop saying God doesn't give you more than what you can handle? I grew up Southern Baptist, I've been to a lot of churches, I've been to churches where you get the Holy Ghost and roll on the floor and the whole thing. I've been to Catholic Church, I've been to all types of churches. And you know, for the ones that say this, let's no more. Let's stop with this God doesn't give you more than what you can handle. Sometimes life is just life, and we've seen people broken by what they're going through and they end up depressed or on drugs or ending their life. So let's stop with putting this on God. If you believe in God, and I would love to have a discussion about God at a later time. Do I believe in God? Yes, but probably differently how some other people do. But God would never like put problems on us, it's just life and us being humans on the planet with free will and unfortunate things happen. We see it all the time. I watch a lot of the ID channel because I'm always trying to learn human behavior, and it doesn't make sense how some people they're nice, they do everything right, and they get their life taken. Someone they know has a contract on their life. Like right now, watching the show Who Hires the Hitman. So let's stop with this nonsense of you're not gonna get be given more than what you can handle. That doesn't make people feel good. And believe me, when my son died, it broke me. And a lot of people, when they go through a divorce or breakup, lose a job, they get broken instead of bouncing around like I know I'm not gonna be given more than what I can handle. So let's be careful and think before we speak. Because at the same time, when you say something like that, a lot of times people are hoping, well, I can't handle those things, so hopefully it doesn't happen to me. And we know it just doesn't work that way. Things just happen. But let me just say this with love and truth. Not everything in life is going to make sense, it just won't. And sometimes we have to live life without answers, and if we're meant to have answers, they're somewhere down the path. We can't sit still and say, I need this answer, I need this solution before I walk forward in life. It just doesn't work that way. So it's very important to understand that not everything that happens has a hidden lesson, and some things are just simply unbelievably unfair and messed up, okay? They are just messed up. And sometimes there's no spiritual bow to put on a tragedy, you know. Yeah, a lot of times we hear how, okay, somebody lost a loved one and they do a foundation, but they're still healing, they're still in pain, they're still grieving, but they're trying to find a way to move forward. Sometimes you know, like he like the guy John Walsh, who, you know, has found missing children because his son is missing, but he's still grieving. He's still doing the best he can as a human, but yeah, he didn't want it to happen to other people, but it wasn't like it had to happen to him to help other missing kids. Let's just not do that to each other, let's be kinder to each other. And so I'm glad I never really said these things to people because it never felt right. I'm just glad. And some things, you know, are unbelievably unfair, and sometimes there's no spiritual bow, right? To put on it, I'm gonna say that again. There just isn't. And as a mom, me, who's lost my son, who's a facilitator, I don't call myself a healer. I believe that we're facilitators and the psychic. And as a woman who has lived through a lot of trauma, I could tell you from experience, some things don't have a reason. Not one thing can bring peace to what has happened. It just can't. Bad things happen to good people, people suffer who don't deserve it. Life unfolds in ways that feels cruel. You think about it. A child being abused, you wouldn't tell a child who's been abused, well, God wouldn't give you more than what you can handle. Come on. So let's think. So and still we keep trying to force meaning where there may not be none. And I've seen people do it, and it really stirs them up, it really s causes them to spiral emotionally. It doesn't make them feel better. So I want to talk about why this happens and how to heal when life makes no sense, and how to understand karma in a grounded, compassionate way, not as punishment, but as a teacher. Let's take a breath together and begin. Yeah, let's do that. Um, why we want life to make sense? You know, humans always want meaning, we want answers, we want clarity, because our minds want control. We're like if we have the answers, we uh feel better, we won't feel so vulnerable, so weak, we won't feel like a fool. Okay? If we can understand why something happened, then maybe we can prevent it from happening again, right? Because who wants to go through it twice? And maybe we can feel safer. Maybe we can make peace with it. Maybe. Okay. So there is a chance of that. And this is a comes from survival. It's about survival. If our nervous system feels chaos, it tries to create order somehow, some way. So after painful something painful happens, the mind starts searching. What did I do wrong? What was this the lesson? What was the lesson? Did I attract this? Drives me crazy when people go, did I attract this lesson? No. Is this karma? Was I a bad person, two so one? Is this why it's happening to me? People think this way. What am I supposed to learn? Who knows? Maybe nothing other than bad things happen. Who knows? If there's something for you to learn, you learn it, but don't get stuck there. And you know, but sometimes tragedy isn't a lesson. Maybe it's just cause and effect, our human free will, our being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That happens a lot. We see that with these shootings, these mass shootings, they're just in the wrong place. What they didn't need a lesson? Shoot, no. Um, not every heartbreak has a spiritual purpose. Not every loss is divinely orchestrated, not every painful moment is meant to grow you. It isn't. But you know, when things keep on happening over and over, it's like, okay, then you look at it, right? You look at what's going on. Am I around the wrong people? Did something happen? But let's not treat it as punishment or a lesson. Let's treat it as cause and effect, and maybe, just maybe, you can turn it around. So, not every painful moment is meant to grow you. Your suffering does not mean you failed a spiritual test. You know, us spiritual people, sometimes we get in our own way and in our head too much. Don't do that to yourself. Your pain does not mean you manifest as something wrong. Even though I teach manifesting, I'm all about manifesting, I survived this far in life because of manifesting. Sometimes we can't manifest everything to go our way. Sometimes we just can't. And your struggle does not mean karma is punishing you. Some things just happen. And that in itself is the hardest truth to accept. It really is, but it's something that I want people to really accept so that they don't torture themselves. So the truth about pain, some things are just unfair. Let's be honest. Saying everything happens for a reason can't be spiritual bypassing. It really is. And you know what spiritual bypassing is it's avoiding feeling the pain, doing the inner work to heal, to just go, oh, it was divine, and you know, you just kind of bury it, right? And I notice uh be I've seen people do that. There's a few trainings I used to go to early on in my spiritual journey where I seen a lot of people bypassing, and you know what? They became very angry. People, you could tell that they're trying to smile, but they were boiling over, and they were frustrated, and they were mad because you know they were trying to understand the lesson and trying to understand why something happened, but they were still in pain, and when you bypass your pain, you will get angry because anger is the bodyguard of sadness, so that's why people get angry because they're really sad under it all about something. So when you spiritually bypass, you shut down your real emotions, you ignore what you're really feeling, and that will erase the grief for the moment. It invalidates the grief, is what it really does. But it's gonna come back stronger later, trust me. You're gonna really spiral if you do that. That's how people end up losing it. It makes people feel like they're somehow responsible for the worst moments of their life. And you know, not always, not really. And the truth is, children should not suffer, right? Why are children going through child abuse? They don't need that lesson, they don't need that experience. Nobody needs that, right? Parents should not have to bury their kids. No, we shouldn't, but it happens. Abuse is not a lesson from the universe, it really isn't. Please nobody think this. No, abuse is wrong all the time. But sometimes people twist things. I've heard it all. Illness does not happen because someone attracted it. I mean, a lot of times, now I know certain illnesses I I've learned by reading studies, like if we are too stressed or we're not paying attention to ourselves, we will get sick so that we put ourselves first. But I don't want to call it a lesson or that you attracted it. I want to call it an awakening. When that happens, you're waking up to yourself that you get to put yourself first and love yourself and be good to yourself because I remember, I remember when I got bit by my sister's dog. I don't know, sometimes you see it on video, the left corner of my mouth, you know, there's an entry there, part, a little part of it is missing, and it's been repaired, but I know that the universe wanted me away from her. And so the universe had to do something aggressive by me getting bit by a dog, and I love the dog, it was just so random that that happened, and the way that she responded to me, and it brought up all this stuff that she hated me all these years, right? So the universe wanted me away from her, and I wasn't taking the smaller sign, so yes, the bigger sign came, but it wasn't a punishment or a lesson, it was an awakening. We have to watch our terms, and you you know, through it, yeah, I was kind of forced more into my psychic gift, I couldn't practice, you know. So some things came out of it, but there's other ways that I could have gotten there, and that's what I realized. Even when something tough happens, it's not the only way that you can get into your awareness, but I needed the big message because this particular family member was harmful to me. But here's the beautiful part about all of this, you know, although things simply don't make sense and they won't, no matter how spiritual you are, do keep that in mind. It isn't like you gotta evolve more. The beautiful part is that even though everything doesn't happen for a reason, you can still choose to make some type of meaning of it for you. Like you're not gonna take mess from somebody anymore. Um, you're gonna go to therapy, you you know, and heal so it doesn't ruin the rest of your life what you went through. You're gonna honor your life more because you know life is short now. Um, you can do something like that, yes, and that could become the beautiful part, and so that's something to remember, but let's not just say, oh, you needed this or you wouldn't be given more than what you can handle. Let's not do that. You could turn your pain into purpose, you could turn your healing into wisdom, you could turn your survival into strength, but that meaning is something you create, you create that, you make the decision what comes from that, not something the universe forces onto you. You know, even though I talked about the situation with my sister, I feel like it was kind of forced onto me, but what I did afterwards, I got the message, and what I created afterwards was what I decided to do with it instead of letting it destroy me. So let's talk about cause and effect. Because I that's what life is, right? And why it's not spiritual punishment. Many things in life are simply cause and effect. It's not spiritual, it's just you know, one thing leads to another. Hey, you know, you were in the wrong place, so an injury happened. Uh you're part of a bad event just because you're in the wrong place. You didn't know you're gonna be in the wrong place, you got in a relationship, you thought you could trust the person, and they started abusing it, you know, and so cause and effect, right? Um, I said I have brain tumor, you died, cause and effect. And so that's very important. So it's not necessarily karmic. Um, I definitely gotta talk about karma more because I've learned a lot from all you guys. Not cosmic punishment, oh Lord. Just the reality of being human. Yes, being human is tough. Example, someone drives trunk, accident happens. Someone cheats repeatedly, relationship breaks. Someone doesn't go to the doctor, illness worsens. Someone is abusive, the person leaves them. It's just how it goes down. These aren't necessarily karmic lessons. They're natural consequences of human choices. And sometimes bad things happen with no clear cause at all. A sudden illness. You know, you think about people who are healthy and then all of a sudden they go to the doctor and find out that they're terminal, and they really didn't have signs till they were close to that, you know, being told that they're terminal. Think about it. An accident, sometimes it I, you know, and I do this to myself when I'm driving, and I I haven't had an accident recently, but I'm always like, pay attention, pay attention, be grounded, be focused. And I probably would be hard on myself if I got into an accident. Although I haven't been in one ever, that was my fault. I still will take on the responsibility of I would if I would have seen that person do this or do that. And when I look back, I couldn't have changed that situation at all. But you know, sometimes we can't stop an accident for happening. A tragedy, we can't stop it. An unexpected loss, being born into hardship. Come on, you know, when people are poor, born poor, you know, it's just cause and effect, or it just happens with no clear reason. It's not personal, it's not punishment, it's not failure, it's the unpredictability of human life. The truth about karma, it doesn't punish you. You know, we have misused this term so much, and sometimes I you know, I I go, oh my goodness, here we go again. Misusing this term, misusing this, misusing that, right? So karma is one that we misuse. Of course, narcissism is another one. I remember when bipolar, you know, we say things over and over and we start and it starts losing its meaning. And so let's talk about karma. I give you a quickie on karma because the word gets abused and misunderstood in the spiritual world. Most people think karma is you did something bad, something bad will happen to you, or that person hurt me, so karma will get them. But that's not what karma is, it's not that simple. Real karma means energy creates more of itself. Real karma means energy creates more of itself, so karma is. And punishment, it isn't revenge, it's not cosmic payback. Sometimes we want it to be, right? When someone hurts us, we want them to get theirs, but that isn't what karma really is. It is teaching, it's a teachable moment. So if someone's hurting someone, if something happens to them, they're learning maybe I shouldn't be that person that hurt others, right? That can happen. And that's really what karma is. It teaches, not punishes. But you know, if people are obsessed with fairness and justice, they will want karma to take over. And I've seen people have things happen, but it was interesting. They had it happen in the same way that they did to other people. Like, I have another example. I had a friend years ago try to isolate me from other friends, and I didn't know why, and they wouldn't tell me why when I asked. And it didn't work. But then this person had a situation with a family member, and the family member actually succeeded in isolating this person from many other family members. And I remember when they were talking about it because we're in a big group and they're talking about it, and I said, Oh yeah, that's a teachable moment. It's not punishment. It was a teacher's person. You don't isolate people because you wouldn't want it done to you. So karma says, Don't do something to someone that you wouldn't want done to you. That's one part of karma. That's a fraction of karma. But karma isn't revenge, it's not cosmic payback, right? It is cause and effect on a soul level. It is patterns repeating until awareness breaks them. Sometimes things happen over and over until the awareness comes, the awakening comes. And here's the important part: not everything painful is karma. Many tragedies aren't karmic. Many hardships aren't karmic. Many losses are not karmic. And I love talking about the woo-woo spiritual metaphysical stuff. I even got an advanced degree in metaphysics, but I'm still aware enough to know this. You know, sometimes karma is actually beautiful, right? Kindness returning to you, spiritual gifts opening up. A lot of you guys are recognizing your psychic gifts. Love arriving when you finally are ready to receive it, abundance flowing as you heal. You know, don't you just love it when you keep on having abundant moments? Generational patterns breaking through you because you're breaking generational trauma and curses, your soul evolving, you're becoming more aware to where it's a little bit easier to live on the planet. Karma can bless your life as much as it can challenge it. Karma is not here to hurt you, it's here to help your soul grow heal and return to truth. So finding peace when life makes no sense. How do you do that? Peace doesn't come from figuring out why something happened. It really doesn't, but I see people wanting to know the why. Peace comes from acceptance, it is what it is sometimes. That's a horrible way to put it, but sometimes it is what it is. You know, that's what I had to realize with my son's death and other things that happened in my life. It is what it is. Acceptance does not mean approval, it does not mean that you're okay with what happened. It really doesn't. It does not mean that you agree with the pain, it does not make the tragedy right. That's not what acceptance is. Acceptance means I acknowledge that this happened and I release the need to understand what cannot be understood. That's what acceptance is. Here are the real pathways to peace. Stop forcing meaning. Not everything needs a spiritual explanation. You don't have to make every heartbreak a lesson. Sometimes you just end it. Sometimes you can simply say, This hurt me. This changed me, and I'm healing. Let yourself grieve. Grief is not a failure to be spiritual. It is the most honest response to loss. Let karma be what it is, a teacher, not a judge. You're not being punished. Someone isn't getting away with anything. When they what they create will eventually return to them, not as punishment, but as awareness. Give up the ideal that everything must make sense. Some things won't. Not now, not later, not ever. And that doesn't mean your life can't still be beautiful. Focus on what you can create from it. Your healing, your growth, your boundaries, your compassion, your purpose, your transformation. Meaning is something you choose, not something forced that you are forced into. Very important. So let's have a somatic moment, feeling safe without the answers. Let's take a grounding moment together. Place your hand on your heart and place your other hand on your belly. Take a slow deep breath in through your nose. Exhale gently through the mouth. Say softly to yourself, I do not need to understand everything to heal. I release what has no answer. I am safe in the unknown. I trust myself to navigate life as it comes. Feel your body settle into the truth that you don't need to control the universe to find peace. So I'm gonna close this out because like everything, I could talk forever. Life is mysterious, life is beautiful, life is heartbreaking, life is unpredictable, and life is unfair, life is miraculous, and you are strong enough to live through all of it. Not everything will make sense, not everything is meant to, and that's okay. What matters is the meaning you create, the healing you choose, the love you give, and the life you build moving forward. Karma does not punish you. The universe is not against you. Bad things don't happen because you're flawed or unworthy, and nothing you live through diminishes your soul. So let me just say thank you for letting me speak this into your heart today, that you are not alone, you're guided, and you're strong enough to walk through even things that make no sense. And until next time, I'm Doctor Donna. And take a deep breath. Take your power back and trust that your story is still unfolding in beautiful ways. Thank you for listening and have an amazing day.