You Can’t Sage Away Shame 🔥
"You can't heal what you don't reveal." — Jay-Z
"Spirituality without shadow work is just emotional bypassing."
I once spent six months lighting candles, chanting mantras, meditating every morning before work. I stacked crystals like armor. Journaled with rose quartz in hand. Posted quotes about “vibrations” and “letting go.”
It looked like growth. From the outside… it was pristine.
But I wasn’t healing. I was hiding.
I didn’t want to admit I still resented my mother. I didn’t want to face the ways I learned to control connection, not through force, but through withdrawal. That I weaponized distance and called it “self-respect.” That my desire to be liked was really just a survival instinct dressed in charm, rooted in a childhood where love had to be earned.
Shadow work ruined the aesthetic I had built. And thank God it did.
Because healing isn’t sterile. It isn’t just light and love and incense smoke.
It’s uncomfortable. Mucky. Confrontational. It forces you to sit face-to-face with the parts of yourself you’d rather exile. It says, You want truth? Then look where it hurts.
Otherwise, it’s not spirituality. It’s a self-deception wrapped in sage.
Tonight, instead of escaping into your “feel-good” rituals, try this instead:
Write one sentence—just one—that begins with:
“One part of me I pretend doesn’t exist is…”
Don’t justify. Don’t soften it. Just write it.
That sentence might be the doorway to your actual healing. Not the curated kind. The real kind.
And real healing requires you to meet your shadow with open eyes, not closed affirmations.
"You can't heal what you don't reveal." — Jay-Z
Shadow work isn’t poetry, it’s exposure. The healing starts where the hiding stops.
Tell me honestly… have you ever caught yourself using healing tools to avoid hard truths?
Like using meditation to numb instead of process? Or quoting “everything happens for a reason” to skip accountability?
We’ve all done it. No shame. Just truth.
I’d love to hear your moment of reckoning. The story where the “light” ran out and the real work began. Let’s make this space one where we stop pretending.
Because nothing transforms faster than honesty in community.
Shadow work isn’t about beating yourself up. It’s about refusing to lie to yourself any longer.
The version of you you’ve been running from? That part wants your attention, not your punishment.
So light your candles. Meditate. Pray. But while you’re at it… pull up a chair for your shadow.
Because anything less is just spiritual stagecraft.
And I know you’re ready for the real thing.
— Ryan Puusaari
Thank you for reading today’s Healing Text.
Huge thanks to my elite circle of paid subscribers—Lynne and Max—you’re the real MVPs here!
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Hey, I finally had to let out the tears. I've been pretending for too long. I guess I'm confronting reality with this memoir. Sometimes, I can't stand anything I've accomplished in my life! Growing up wasn't easy, so the good things in life would not replace my family's dysfunction.