From Lack To Abundance – Why Hate Blocks Our Capacity To Love
Updated: Nov 28, 2025
Nadja Ravens is a Swedish author and director known for Blacksmith of Happiness. She is an expert when it comes to mental health issues, especially addiction and eating disorders. She works with women through creative coaching programs and is the founder of Unlock'd Magazine, an online magazine and platform dedicated to supporting and empowering female creators. She is committed to getting women's stories told from a female voice in the film industry and creative field and to empowering all women who struggle with stigma.
Hate is often misunderstood. We treat it as something external, directed outward, aimed at others. But the deepest form of hate is internal. It is the quiet, corrosive force that blocks our capacity to love, to feel love, to let love in.
For years, I believed my inability to receive love was caused by the world around me, by betrayal, fear, and abandonment. But in truth, it was the hatred I held toward myself that sealed the door.
When self-hate simmers, love cannot land, not from partners, not from family, not from friends, and especially not from ourselves.
The turning point: From filling the void to feeling full of light
Addiction teaches one brutal truth: you cannot fill the void with anything external. No substance. No relationship. No money. No achievement.
But something shifts when an addict moves from desperately trying to fill the emptiness to simply allowing themselves to feel full of light.
That is the moment transformation begins. It isn’t the absence of the substance that heals us, it’s the presence of ourselves.
This is the journey I explore in my book "The Lack of Theory," moving from lack to abundance, from emptiness to the immeasurable heaps of beauty already within us.
The abundance we seek is already inside us
We live in a world obsessed with external solutions. More success. More validation. More “fixing.”
But here’s the truth: You can be a millionaire and still feel hollow inside. You can have the dream life and still feel lost. You can be surrounded by love and still feel unlovable.
Nothing external can heal what is wounded within. Success cannot replace self-worth. Money cannot soothe the inner child. And no one else can save you from the parts of yourself you refuse to meet.
Addiction and the myth of external wholeness
As someone who has lived through addiction, I learned that relying on anything or anyone outside myself to make me whole will always lead back to the same emptiness.
This isn’t about rejecting support, we all need connection, community, and love. It’s about releasing the illusion that salvation exists in something outside of us.
The shift happens when we stop chasing external answers and start tending to the light already burning inside.
The art of turning pain into purpose
Healing is not about fixing what is broken. It’s about remembering what was never lost.
Art makes this possible. Creativity becomes the bridge between pain and purpose. It transforms survival into expression, chaos into clarity, emotion into meaning. Art gives shape to what we cannot yet speak. It lets us witness ourselves. And it leads us home.
This is the work I now guide women through, helping them break out of survival mode, release emotional blocks, and use creativity as a pathway back to themselves. Because when you learn to create from your truth, you no longer fear the emptiness. You fill it with your voice.
Read more from Nadja Ravens
Nadja Ravens, Director, Author, Actress & Business Coach
Nadja Ravens is an expert and a voice for any female artist, dreamer, and visionary who wants to unlock their potential and grow a business from their dreams. She overcame addiction and now wants to help others find their own power within. As her film production company, Black Ravens Studio's slogan goes, she lives by the motto "Rage more. Dare more. Create more." The sky is the limit!
