The Many Contradictions of Healing

How strength and vulnerability live side by side

Cheers to Sunday! Wow, mid-June already. Summer's rolling on...

And yet, even in the middle of Summer activities, certain feelings stay patient, waiting for us to notice.

There’s a quiet kind of ache we don’t always talk about.

The ache of doing the work: the books, the therapy, the late-night journaling, and still, some days, wishing someone would simply text first. Not because we’re weak. But because we’re still human.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the many strange contradictions that healing brings:
How independence can feel like both freedom and loneliness.
How loyalty to our past can quietly chain us to what hurts.
How silence can masquerade as peace.
And how sometimes, the most radical healing isn’t fixing anything, but being loved exactly where we are.

This isn’t a tidy checklist of self-improvement tips. It’s a small offering of reflections, for anyone who’s ever felt both proud of how far they've come, and quietly tired of carrying it all alone.

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Have You Ever Needed Someone?

…and Hated That You Did?

You told yourself,

“I’ve done too much inner work to feel this way.”

But there it was,

that quiet, almost embarrassing ache

for someone to check in.

To text first.

To ask,

“How’s your heart?”

and mean it.

Have you ever been

both proud of your independence

and quietly crushed by it?

This is the strange math of healing:

You grow strong enough to stand alone,

but still hope someone reaches out.

Needing isn’t a weakness.

It’s the part of you that stayed human.

Healing doesn’t mean you stop needing people.

It means you stop pretending you don’t.

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The Hidden Cost of Staying Loyal to Your Past

But I owe it to the past to stay.

No. You owe it to your future to heal.

I don’t want to abandon what we had.

You’re not abandoning. You’re releasing the chain.

But what about loyalty?

Loyalty to your own peace isn’t betrayal. It’s deliverance.

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Tired?

Not all tired is the same.

Some exhaustion is physical.

Some is emotional.

Some is grief…

due to pretending to be okay,

for too long.

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No, That’s Not Your Intuition…

You feel it in your gut

and call it intuition.

But pause.

Look closer.

Sometimes, it’s not wisdom whispering,

it’s guilt posing as guidance.

You say no,

and feel like a traitor.

You walk away,

and feel selfish.

You rest,

and feel unworthy.

That’s not your inner voice.

That’s a bruise speaking,

the one left by a life

that taught you

safety comes

from staying small.

True intuition doesn’t shame you.

It doesn’t tighten your chest

or make your love feel conditional.

Real intuition steadies you.

It softens your breath.

It moves like trust.

It sounds like yes.

It feels like freedom.

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You are not late.

You’re just on the longer road,

the one with more soul in its soil.

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Not All Kindness Is Wise

Love that drains you isn’t loyalty. It’s bleeding behind a smile.

Pulling back isn’t cold. It’s self-respect.

You are not infinite. You don’t owe your exhaustion to anyone.

Give where you are met, seen, held, returned… not bled.

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It Feels Like Peace… But It’s Not

We call it peace.

When the noise quiets.

When no one raises their voice.

When everything feels… still.

We name it healing.

We whisper that we’ve grown.

We hold up the silence like fragile proof.

But not all silence is peace.

Not all stillness is safety.

Sometimes, the quiet is simply where we hide

away from hard conversations,

away from the sharp edges of anger,

away from anything that stirs what we’ve tried to bury.

We build quiet sanctuaries between the words,

hoping the silence will save us.

We call it calm.

But beneath it lives a kind of freezing,

with our nervous system turning on itself,

tired of not being heard.

We become masters of minimizing.

Of swallowing our needs before they take shape.

Of smiling through the ache.

Of convincing ourselves we’re easy to love,

so long as we ask for nothing.

But real peace is not the art of disappearing.

It is the courage to stay present,

even when the body shakes.

It is giving voice what aches inside,

even when the words come out trembling.

Because peace isn’t the absence of conflict.

Peace is the presence of truth,

the kind that holds your whole self.

(even the parts you tried to erase.)

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Your inner child

...still waits.

Not for rescue,

...for reunion.

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You Didn’t Lose Them...

You followed love to the edge,

where holding on to them

meant losing yourself.

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The Most Radical Healing Isn't What You Think

She thought she needed to be fixed.

She was tired of carrying it all.

The symptoms.

The shame.

The list of flaws she recited like a prayer

that she couldn’t stop repeating.

She believed healing meant

erasing everything that was wrong.

Making her clean.

Making her finally worthy.

But what she really needed

was someone who would sit beside the wreckage,

to feel the weight without shrinking from it.

To stay.

To witness.

Not to rescue her.

To hold her.

Because sometimes,

the most radical kind of healing

isn’t being made whole,

but being loved in the places that still ache.

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A few thoughts before you go:

The longer I walk this road, the more I realize:
Healing isn’t about becoming invincible.
It’s about staying soft where life tried to harden us.
It’s about honoring the parts of us that still ache without making them wrong.

We’re all learning in our own ways...

As always, I’m grateful you’re here. If any of this met you where you are today, feel free to share, comment, or simply sit with it awhile. Your presence here means more than you know.

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“Old Man Talks” Book 1: Now Available

I’ve gathered more than 50 of my early stories, essays, and reflections into a new eBook: Old Man Talks, the Early Days

As a thank you, it's free for all paid subscribers.

Keep this letter alive. Subscribe.

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