I Tried to Heal by Pretending I Wasn’t Me
For a long time, I thought healing meant becoming someone else.
Someone calm and collected.
Someone who never raised her voice, never got overwhelmed, never chain-smoked outside her front door after a long day. Someone who journaled every morning, meditated twice a day, drank green smoothies, and smiled through stress.
Basically: not me.
I thought if I just followed the right steps—read the books, stacked the habits, rewrote the story—I could finally leave behind the parts of me I didn’t want to admit existed.
The late nights. The chaos. The intensity. The things I no longer spoke about.
The shadows that clung to me even while I was lighting candles and pulling oracle cards.
And for a while, I tried to “heal” myself into this other version.
Polished. Posed.
Routines that looked good on paper but felt like punishment in practice.
The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard enough.
It was that I was trying to become someone I wasn’t.
I thought I had to escape myself to be okay.
But what I’ve learned—slowly, messily, and honestly—is that true healing isn’t about escaping.
It’s about returning.
It’s not about erasing the rough edges, but learning to soften around them.
It's about seeing yourself clearly, not trying to rebrand your soul.
It’s about understanding that sometimes healing looks like:
Dancing in your lounge room instead of doing a “proper” workout.
Singing while you do the dishes because breathwork felt like too much.
Letting yourself scroll and cry and feel weird, without spiraling into shame.
These days, I practice healing that actually feels like love.
Not discipline disguised as self-worth. Not punishment in the name of progress.
Just small, consistent acts of softness. Real-life rituals that meet me where I am in the moment.
I still slip into old patterns sometimes. I still hide parts of me—sometimes by habit, sometimes by fear.
But now I know how to come back.
How to watch myself without judging.
How to hold all my versions—past and present—with compassion, not contempt.
I’ve stopped trying to “become” someone else.
I’m becoming more me instead.
All of me. The light, the dark, the divine, the gritty, the healing, the human.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s what healing really is.
If you’re in this place too..
Here’s what I want you to know:
You don’t have to be perfect to be succeeding in your healing journey.
You don’t have to quit everything “bad” or get everything “right” to be worthy of softness and care.
And you don’t need to fit the wellness aesthetic to be well.
You just need to meet yourself where you are—and walk with her from there.
Not away from her.
Gentle growth means growing at your pace.
Messy. Honest. Yours.
💌 Want a little support as you lean into your own version of healing?
Join the free Mindful Moments Challenge — it's full of gentle, realistic practices to help you come home to yourself.
