There were months where I did everything “right.”

I journaled every morning.
I drank the tea, pulled the oracle cards, did the shadow work.
I showed up to therapy, held space for others, said the affirmations out loud like I meant them.

And still, something was off.

I’d wake up bone-tired after eight hours of sleep.
I’d feel hollow after meditation, like the silence was too loud.
I’d carry this invisible ache in my chest that said, “I’m still not okay.”

For a long time, I thought maybe I was just too sensitive. Too much. Too broken.

But over time, something cracked open.

And it wasn’t me—it was the lie, the trap that we live in.

The lie that healing is only about what we do individually: self-improvement, personal growth.

The times we get on the yoga mat.
Or in the therapy room.
Or inside a six-week course.

The lie that if we’re still feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or numb…we must not be “doing the work.”

That was never true.

Here’s what I see now:

We are not failing at healing. We are trying to heal in a system that is still stuck in survival.

The nervous system doesn’t lie.

It responds to our lived environment. To what’s unresolved in our lineage. To what our bodies had to endure just to survive.

And the reality is, many of us were born into legacies of war, famine, violence, and suppression.

Our great-grandparents survived the trenches of World War I and II. Many of our grandparents processed trauma by never talking about it. “Keep calm and carry on” wasn’t just a slogan—it was a collective trauma response.

That kind of silence doesn’t disappear. It gets passed down through DNA. Through culture. Through nervous systems shaped in households that didn’t feel emotionally safe—even when they were physically secure.

That ache we carry? That freeze in our chest or fire in our gut?

It’s ancient.

And then came the modern world.

The world that values productivity over presence.
Hustle over healing.
Image over intimacy.

It tells us to fix our mindset while our bodies scream for rest.
It says we need to be more spiritual—when really, we just need to feel safe enough to be honest.

We learned to wear our healing like a costume.
To share the high points and hide the numbness.
To perform our wellness so well, we stopped noticing that deep down, we were still bracing.

So what now?

We begin again.

Not with more striving.
But with remembering.

This time we “Slow down and soften up” first.

Remembering that healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens when we’re safe to fall apart—and supported enough to rebuild. It happens when we integrate, not just the mind or the body or the spirit—but all three, together simultaneously.

We understand collective trauma and individual trauma aren’t sides of the same coin.
We stop separating what was never meant to be split.
We return to rhythm.
To nature.
To community.

We begin to trust that healing can be cyclical.
That emotions are not problems to solve.
That softness is a strength we’ve forgotten how to honour.

In a time when the world seems at its darkest, I want to remind you of a beautiful truth:

We are not failing. We are remembering what it means to heal as a people, not just as individuals. As human beings.

And we’re doing it while holding the weight of generations before us and building something gentler for those who’ll come after.

That is sacred.

That is enough.

And we’re already doing it—together.

~