There’s a line in the new movie K-Pop Demon Hunters that I watched with my kids, and it has been sitting with me ever since. 

The lyric goes something like: “The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony… my voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like.”

That line hit me in a way I didn’t expect. It made me realize how much of adulthood, especially before kids, I spent trying to make my voice smaller or smoother so everyone else stayed comfortable.

Since having kids, something has shifted in me. I’ve stopped pretending I’m “fine” when I’m not, and I’ve stopped telling little white lies to my close friends and family just to keep the peace. I’ve started telling the truth about how I’m actually doing. This post is about that shift, about being real and vulnerable, because it feels like the right time. This is what my voice sounds like now.

The Story Behind the Photo

Here’s the story behind the photo of me lying in the moss. If you look closely, you can see the tears in my eyes. The photo was taken after a particularly intense therapy session with my counsellor, where I’ve been healing some old trauma. She graciously agreed to let me do Zoom therapy outside in the forest, which has become a strangely beautiful part of my healing process.

I hear pileated woodpeckers and chipmunks yelling at each other. Something about being surrounded by trees and moss while doing this work feels grounding in a way I can’t quite explain.

After sessions like that, it isn’t graceful. I ugly cry. I sometimes shout into the air and release emotions I’ve been holding for years. For most of my life, I hid them the way kids hide vegetables in a napkin at the dinner table.

You see, I’m meeting this season with a bit of defiance. Instead of shrinking, I’m stepping into my superhero suit with honest, open expansion into what might be possible on the other side of doing the hard work.

Destigmatizing Healing

The main reason I’m writing this is simple. I want to help destigmatize mental health support, counselling, therapy, coaching, and the active process of healing yourself.

As author Glennon Doyle says: “The braver we are, the luckier we get.”

Bravery, I’m learning, often looks like sitting in the uncomfortable truth of your own story. Going through my healing process has been one of the most treacherous roller coasters I’ve ever experienced. There are moments where I wonder why I decided to get on this roller coaster at all when there was a perfectly safe carousel nearby. It would be so easy to twirl in calm circles, gently raising up and down as the world swept by. But I made a choice to get into the gut-busting, face-melting Rollercoaster 5000 and face something big and hard head-on.

Our brains are wired to confuse difficulty with danger, and so naturally we shy away from things that feel hard. What I’m learning through this work is that revisiting painful experiences and healing old trauma can be deeply uncomfortable, but uncomfortable is not the same thing as unsafe. Sometimes healing is about gathering the scattered pieces of the past, looking at them honestly, and telling the story again in a way that is truer and kinder to the person you were.

A Love Letter to Therapy

This is also a little love letter to therapy and to therapists. Finding the right person matters so much. Whether it’s a coach, a counsellor, a doctor, or a guide of any kind, healing often begins when you find someone you trust enough to let them sit beside you in the hard places.

I’m not finished with this journey, not even close. But I’m already seeing the ways the past still touches the present. Instead of shrinking, I’m meeting this moment with defiance. Bold defiance, knowing that healing is hard and that choosing to face it might be one of the bravest things a person can do. My vision of the future is so much better because I had the courage to face my biggest fear of all and that bravery, that defiance, that growth is everything to me and the woman I am growing up to be.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

If you’re reading this and something in it resonates, maybe sit with a few questions for yourself.

• What is something in your life that you know needs healing?
• What fear have you been letting run the show?
• Where in your life are you shrinking to keep things comfortable?
• What might change if you stopped avoiding the hard thing and took one small step toward facing it?

If you’re someone who knows you want support in that process, someone to hold space, ask the real questions, and challenge you to grow, that’s the work I do. I work with people who are willing to do the hard, honest work of looking at their lives and choosing something more aligned. And if I’m not the right fit, I’m fortunate to be connected to an incredible network of coaches and practitioners who are also doing this kind of work.

You don’t have to do it alone.
But you do have to be willing to begin.