When Healing Starts to Hurt
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A Spiritual Retreat Gone Sideways
It’s supposed to be peaceful here. Ocean breeze, my family laughing somewhere down the hill at the communal dining hall. The air smells crisp. Fall is here.
I’m sitting on a weathered bench, tucked between the pines, crying into my hoodie sleeve.
I forgot my meds. Well, technically, I planned to forget them — rationed what was left of my ADHD prescription so I wouldn’t run out midweek. Genius plan. Except now I’m jittery, manic, hormonal, and trying to hold it together at a spiritual retreat where everyone else seems to have achieved inner peace and hydration.
I came here to feel better. I came here to connect. And all I feel is… exhausted.
The Weight of Constant Fixing
I’ve been “healing” for so long I don’t remember what normal even feels like.
overthinking until my eyeballs burn — I’ve done the whole gamut... Meditating, breathwork, journaling, art., ignoring it... And yet here I am, at a retreat by the sea, back aching, eyes puffy, wondering why I still feel like I’m missing something.
It hit me...
If I’m always healing, I’m always broken.
That thought hurt worse than the headache I’d been blaming on caffeine withdrawal.
Because when I’m honest, I’ve started to make healing my personality — always working on myself, always trying to reach this imaginary version of “healed me” who never spirals, never forgets her meds, never snaps at her husband, never cries in the woods.
It's exhausting.
The Quiet Realization
So there I am — puffy, hormonal, and half-delusional — sitting on this bench when it hits me:
Maybe I’m not supposed to fix this. Maybe I’m just supposed to feel it.
Maybe “healing” has turned into another job I’m doing (badly.)
The ocean hums in the background. The breeze shifts. For a minute, I stop thinking. I stop solving. I stop “processing.”
And it feels… pretty damn good.
Redefining Healing
I want to reframe 'healing'... hang a disco ball on it.
To breathe into it. To love myself through it.
To stop reaching for enlightenment and go take a fucking nap. Stop digging up every root. Just be.
I’m not broken. Maybe I’m just tired.
So I took a walk back to the cabin. Didn’t meditate, didn’t journal, didn’t “do the work.” I sat my ass down, and listened to the ocean with no goal other than being alive in that moment.
That may be the most spiritually aligned thing I’ve tried in years.