There’s a quiet place many of us live in, one where we call it healing, but deep down, we know we’re just hiding. I see it in the women I work with. I’ve seen it in myself too. The woman who says all the right things, reads all the right books, burns the sage, journals every morning, and posts her affirmations, but still goes to bed feeling heavy. Confused. Disconnected.

I have sat across from women who look like they have it all together. Who say, “I’ve moved on,” or “I’m not angry anymore.” And yet, with just a gentle question—“How are you really doing?”—you can feel the armor begin to crack. The way their voice softens. Their shoulders drop. The silence that follows says more than words ever could.

But…..Healing isn’t always what we say it is. Real healing is raw. It’s disruptive. It gets uncomfortable. And many of us have mistaken performance for progress, repeating cycles, masking pain with productivity, and calling it growth.

Avoidance is sneaky. It wears a mask of wisdom. It shows up in the form of spiritual language, over-functioning, over-serving, and over-explaining. It says, “I’ve forgiven them” but still flinches at their name. It says, “I’m fine,” while your chest tightens in every room you walk into. It looks like hyper-independence, perfectionism, and people-pleasing wrapped up in a tidy bow of strength and survival.

It’s not your fault. It’s a trauma response. But it’s also a pattern.

Patterns don’t go away just because we ignore them. They repeat. In our relationships. In our reactions. In our inability to rest. In our fear of setting boundaries. In our tendency to shrink when we should take up space.

I want to lovingly say this: avoidance has a rhythm. It repeats like a song you never meant to memorize. It sounds like “I’m busy,” when you’re really overwhelmed. It looks like choosing emotionally unavailable people again and again and again. It feels like anxiety you can’t name but always feel, especially when things start going too well. Because comfort feels unfamiliar. Peace feels dangerous. And dysfunction feels like home.

You can be doing the “work” and still be avoiding the root. You can meditate every day and still run from your truth. You can attend every healing workshop, say the affirmations, post the quotes and still hide from the conversations that matter most.

But the moment you get quiet enough to tell yourself the truth, that’s when healing actually begins.

Real healing doesn’t demand perfection.

It doesn’t mean you’ll never be triggered again. It means when you are, you recognize it. You pause. You breathe. And you make a new choice. A choice not rooted in awareness. A choice that aligns with the version of you that’s becoming. A choice that feels awkward and new and brave, because it is.

I know it’s tempting to perform healing.

To check the boxes. To look the part. Especially when you’re the strong one. The go-to. The one who always bounces back. But there comes a time when you must ask yourself: Am I healing, or am I hiding?

If this is you, if you’ve been clinging to “I’m okay” when you’re really not, I want you to know there’s no shame in this moment. Just truth. And truth is where transformation starts.

Healing doesn’t have to be loud. It doesn’t have to be pretty. Sometimes, it looks like saying no without explaining. Sometimes, it’s sitting with your discomfort without rushing to distract yourself. Sometimes, it’s crying on the kitchen floor because you finally stopped holding it all in.

And sometimes, it’s simply letting someone see you, not the curated version, but the messy, unfiltered, still-in-process you.

So if you’ve been convincing yourself that avoidance is growth… I see you. I’ve been you. And I promise, there’s more.

There’s a kind of healing that doesn’t perform, it transforms. A healing that holds space for your past but doesn’t let it define you. A healing that says, “It’s okay to be messy. It’s okay to not have it all figured out.” A healing that whispers, “You’re safe to be real here.”

Because you are.

And if no one else has told you this yet, you don’t have to keep pretending. You don’t have to wear the mask. You don’t have to walk around performing wellness while slowly unraveling inside.

You are allowed to pause. To rest. To stop calling survival healing.

You don’t have to earn your worth through pain. You don’t have to prove you’re healed. You just have to be willing to be honest.

And that honesty? That sacred, trembling truth?

That’s where the real healing begins. That’s where the cycle begins to break.

With ALL my support.

Lydia