There are conversations that change the way we understand health, pain, and death. My meeting with Dr. Arianne Meza was one of those.
Arianne is a Guatemalan physician, author of "Unleashing Venus," and creator of the podcast "Living from Clarity." But beyond her credentials, she is a woman who has gone through her own health crises and profound losses to arrive at a different understanding of what it means to heal.
Arianne's story begins in childhood, caught between two seemingly contradictory philosophies. On the one hand, her mother instilled in her a connection with the spiritual from an early age. She taught her about meditation, shared books with her such as Louise Hay's "You Can Heal Your Life," and passed on a concept that would become fundamental: "Salvation is always within us."
On the other hand, her father was the quintessential conventional doctor. Arianne accompanied him to the hospital since she was a child, watched him work, and admired him. "I saw him as my hero," she tells me. It was he who, without knowing it, inspired her to study medicine.
Two worlds. Two ways of understanding healing. What seemed like a contradiction at the time would, years later, become her greatest strength: the ability to integrate both approaches.
The turning point came during his medical studies, when his own body began to speak to him in ways he could not ignore.
"My number one teacher in terms of health conditions was rosacea, because it forced me to look inward and see why I was eating poorly again, why I was so anxious."
Arianne describes how, in moments of intense anxiety, she would begin to feel heat on her skin. These were crises that forced her to stop. Medication worked like a "band-aid"—it provided temporary relief, but the problem would return.
That was when he began to understand something fundamental: symptoms are not the enemy to be silenced. They are alarms. Messengers. Information about something deeper that is happening.
"I let my body be this alarm for me that forced me to go inward and look for other solutions."
I asked him how we can truly listen to those symptoms instead of simply ignoring or suppressing them. His answer was straightforward:
Sadly, this is how we humans function: until something hurts us, we want to see the light. Until something about our body is taking away our peace, that's when we start to love it and see it differently.
Rosacea wasn't her only symptom. Like many women, Arianne experienced the common combination of digestive issues, ovarian cysts, acne, and hormonal imbalances. And in her quest to heal, she tried everything.
She spent months focusing solely on her diet. She ate impeccably clean. And yet, the symptoms persisted.
"I realized: it's not just the food because I'm eating really well and it's still happening to me," he explains. So he turned his attention to the mind, to meditation. But that alone wasn't enough either.
"There is not just one cure for one aspect, but everything ends up being connected."
That's how she developed what she calls "quiet mode"—a formula that integrates mindful eating with mental and emotional work. It's not a diet. It's not just meditation. It's the understanding that the body, mind, and emotions function as an integrated system.
In a culture obsessed with quick fixes, Arianne's message is uncomfortable but necessary.
I asked her about the female health myth she most wants to debunk. Her answer was immediate:
"The quick fix. A crazy diet, I want to do everything in as little time as possible and be ready to take the photo. You have to take your time, and everyone's process will be different."
There is no magic pill. There is no 21-day diet that solves everything. Every body is different, every story is unique, and real healing requires patience, self-knowledge, and the willingness to look inward.
We also talk about elimination diets—the process of removing food groups to identify intolerances. But even that, he warns me, is not a one-size-fits-all formula. It has to be adapted to each person's context: their age, stress level, how much they sleep, what kind of exercise they do.
"It has to be a consultation. Every body is experiencing a different situation."
The conversation took a profound turn when we got to the topic of grief. Arianne lost her father—the same man who inspired her to study medicine, her childhood hero—in a violent way. It was murder.
This isn't her first traumatic loss. Her grandfather and aunt also died in the same way. "We've had many moments like this in my family," she tells me with a vulnerability that is deeply moving.
That experience of sudden loss left him with a lingering feeling: "It's like I'm talking to you today, and I have no idea where I'll be this afternoon or if I'll be at a funeral."
But from that unbearable pain, something unexpected was born.
After her father's death, Arianne asked him for one thing: to speak to her in some way, to give her a sign.
"It gives me what I ask for, and the way it happens is out of this world. It still gives me chills."
He did not want to give specific details—that is reserved for his next book—but he shared that it was such an inexplicable, specific experience that it cannot be attributed to coincidence.
When she shared her story on social media, asking if anyone else had experienced something similar, she was overwhelmed by the responses. She wasn't alone. These experiences are much more common than we admit out loud.
That's how her next book came about: "Interstellar Moments and Tips for Navigating Grief." It's a mix of personal stories and other people's stories, along with practical tools for dealing with loss.
"What matters is that we are accompanied and that we are receiving these loving hugs from another dimension or these loving whispers that sustain us in so much pain."
I told Arianne about my father-in-law, who passed away almost two years ago. My daughter was three when he died, and now, at five, she still looks for him in the stars. "That's Tito," she says every time she sees one twinkle.
She talks about him openly, asks how we feel, wants to see videos. And my first impulse has often been to change the subject, to protect her from the pain.
Arianne's response was clear and direct:
"We have to talk about it. Death is a very present topic in our home. At night, my children want to talk about it, they want to talk about the body, about when the body is no longer there, when it is underground. And we have to talk about everything we can because if we don't talk about it, that's when those fears and that pain begin."
We avoid these conversations because we are afraid of not having the right answers. But Arianne insists: we don't need to have all the answers. We can say, "I don't know, my love, I really don't have that answer, but this is what I believe..."
"In the end, it's the most natural thing in the world. No one is going to be spared this pain or from leaving. We're all going to leave, so we need to talk about it."
I asked him what he would say to someone who is currently grieving. His answer was profound and honest.
"You have to feel the pain. Because when you try not to feel it, it gets bigger, it gets worse, your mind goes crazy. You have to give yourself permission to hit rock bottom, to really feel it and cry."
And then he shared something that stuck with me:
"When you cry, you realize that you are crying out of love. Then it's like you start to transform. Eventually, you stop crying. You think it will never end, but eventually something loving reappears."
Grief is not linear. There is no correct timeline. Each process takes the time it needs. And the pain never completely goes away—eventually memories and stories return—but their intensity changes. It ceases to be something negative when we learn to question our thoughts about death.
"In the end, what hurts us most is the belief we have about death and the fact that the person is gone. But in reality, pain as a moment of transcendence is pure love."
Despite the traumatic losses she has experienced, Arianne has come to terms with death.
"In my human mind, the ego is afraid. But I think deep down I understand that there is no need to be afraid because of everything that has happened and everything I have seen about death. And what death really is not—it is not death, it is a transition. And there is something else. And that love never dies, it always stays with you."
At the end of our conversation, I asked him five quick questions. The first: one word that defines your philosophy of life.
His response: "Intense."
"It may be for better or worse, but I live everything intensely. You have to shift a little towards the positive," he explains with a smile.
I also asked him about the phrase he remembers when things get complicated:
"God's will is my will. No matter what comes my way, if that's what life wants for me, I want it too. It's like just deciding not to fight it."
Radical acceptance. Not resignation, but a conscious decision not to fight reality.
From this conversation with Arianne, I take away several truths that resonate deeply:
Symptoms are messengers, not enemies. Every pain, every discomfort, every imbalance is trying to tell us something. Our task is not to silence them, but to learn to listen to them.
There is no "quick fix" in health. Real healing requires time, patience, and the willingness to address the body, mind, and emotions as an integrated system.
Everything is connected. We cannot heal one isolated aspect of our lives. Food affects our thoughts. Our thoughts affect our bodies. Our emotions affect our digestion. It is a complex system that requires holistic attention.
We need to talk about death. Silence does not protect us—it is where fears grow. Talking openly, especially with children, normalizes what is natural and inevitable.
Pain must be felt. When we try to avoid pain, it becomes greater. But when we allow ourselves to feel it completely, we eventually realize that we are crying out of love, and that transforms everything.
Death is a transition, not an ending. And we are more accompanied than we think, in ways we cannot always explain.
Arianne is active on Instagram as @arianne.meza. Her book "Desatando a Venus" (Unleashing Venus) is available at Sophos Guatemala and will soon be available in digital format.
His next book, "Interstellar Moments and Tips for Navigating Grief," will be released in the coming months and promises to be an honest and insightful guide for those experiencing loss.
You can also listen to her podcast "Viviendo desde la Claridad" (Living from Clarity), where she continues to share tools and reflections on holistic health.
This conversation reminded me of something we sometimes forget in our search for quick fixes and easy answers: healing is not a destination, it is a process. And that process requires us to return again and again to the same thing: listening, feeling, accepting.
Arianne lives what she teaches. She doesn't speak from theory, she speaks from having gone through her own health crises, her own grief, her own unanswered questions. And that's precisely why her words carry such weight.
In a world that sells us instant solutions and asks us to avoid pain at all costs, Arianne invites us to do the opposite: to go within, to feel fully, to accept what is.
It is a less popular path, but it is the only one that leads to real healing.
