I’m Done With “Healing” – Part 2: Nature

I want to stop chasing a future version of myself that requires me to reject the present one.

The fatigue of trying to change myself has settled in my bones—perhaps for a lifetime. I have no taste for “healing” anymore.

I crave freedom. I want reciprocity with the unified web that created me. I want to accept myself as natural and express myself in coherence. 

It feels impossibly complicated to be human some days. Like, can I not afford the same self-assured pragmatism as the rest of the natural world, for fuck’s sake?!

Does the wave forget it’s part of the ocean? Does the bird reject its song? I’m not a wave, nor a bird, but from my observation, only humans seem to hesitate at the truth of their own belonging—denying the very nature that animates them.

All life grows and dies according to an organizing principle that includes everything: bloom and decay, hunger and rest. This is encouraging, right? The tree doesn’t try to heal itself out of its winter; it just is as winter becomes spring.

Why would we be the exception? What’s so “wrong” with us?

And, what does it mean to live in this natural coherence while existing inside a culture that practically exiles it?

We’re born in essence—wild, honest, whole. Babies exist in coherence; their expression matches their internal reality without compromise. But by design, that doesn’t last. Unlike the tree, we grow up and hear: Don’t say that. Don’t feel that. Don’t need that.

As adults, we’re taught our value lives in comparison and compliance. Our aliveness becomes an economy: productivity as value, busyness as proof, desirability as currency. The metrics may shift marginally depending on our location, but the message stays intact: belonging is conditional.

And so we’re groomed into our own narcissistic universes; competing, surviving, hiding beneath layers of identity that we confuse for self. We disappear inside approval rather than risk being seen as our messy, needy selves. Performance masks natural essence, and our lives mostly become, in Ram Dass’ words, “This is who I think I am.”

We shape ourselves into what feels safest: the helpful one, the quiet one, the nice one, the hardworking one. But that shit gets tired. Regardless of how seductive our identities become, it’s still a layer between us and us. Eventually, many of us feel that separation.

That’s usually when we start “healing.” But if we still believe we need to become something else, healing becomes another denial. The joke of healing is: we’re asking for directions home while standing in the living room.

Our essence never leaves; it doesn’t need purification, it needs permission. That’s what’s natural—truth doing what truth does when we stop managing it.

I used to think rejection was the worst thing that could happen, but I’m learning it’s self-abandonment that hurts the most.