Or

While contemplating this morning, I began to write down some of the polarities my mind is ruminating on. The outcome is paralysis, indecision, and low self-esteem. Modern living as a “healing” homo sapien is confusing.

• Do I let my thoughts just float by OR

  • do I witness, nurture, and tend to them?

• Am I a broken victim with deep wounds OR

  • am I profoundly strong and in essence magical?

• Am I to be a peace with life as it is OR

  • do I require an escape into the woods for the rest of my life?

• Do I capture my brilliant ideas that popup for a second or two OR

  • do I embrace flow and only execute on the ideas that linger on their own accord and create their own self-fuel

• Do I confront others with my boundaries and my truth OR

  • do I walk away and release others without explanation?

• Do I continue to invest in relationships where I feel lonely (which is all of them) in pursuit of secure attachment OR

  • do I believe I deserve to feel seen and understood and release them?

• Do I share everything that I’m going through with everyone in pursuit of collective vulnerability and healing OR

  • is my healing something small and intimate, off of social media and public sharing?

• Do I activate the energy I have inside to change and influence the world through my personal work OR

  • do I focus on myself and the real life I have in front of me?

• Do I express myself through creative aesthetic OR

  • do I release my attachment to form?

• Do I accept my aging face and body with total acceptance and pride OR

  • do I innovate and curate my form as it ages?

• Do I develop and invest in compassion for humanity OR

  • do I lean into what I really feel: fear and frustration?

• Is humanity actually terrible but I’m healing OR

  • are we all, every one of us, completely whole and we all need healing?

• Am I actually “neurodivergent” OR

  • are we all divergent and “neurotypicals” are the ones who don’t stick out or who are okay with masking?

• Do I need a label for myself (queer, neurodivergent, CPTSD, Marie) so that I can understand myself OR

  • do I thrive without any label at all, realizing I’m not understandable but an experience?

• Do I continue to risk unmasking during this awakening OR

  • do I do this rebirth in private?

• Do I push myself to do hard things that I think would be good for me OR

  • do I respect my own internal resistance and follow that breadcrumb trail instead?

• Do I review, edit, and analyze what I write/share here OR

  • do I just publish this without a second thought?

• Do I actively seek out the attention of others healing to work with me OR

  • do I just keep doing the work on myself and they’ll come to me? OR

  • do I release the attachment to wanting to facilitate healing for others at all?

• Are we spiritually/developmentally non-hierarchical OR

  • do I have special insight and expertise to share?

• Does the medical community know what it’s doing for the most part OR

  • is it so profoundly upside down regarding the involvement of the mind/trauma on health that it would rock the planet to admit it?

• Do I actually want to help others heal with plant medicine OR

  • am I looking for an excuse to have real conversations with people?

• Do I actually know a lot OR

  • do I actually know next to nothing?

• Can I actually trust the core of my Self OR

  • am I an onion with a lifelong series of layers of trauma I have to work through?

• Do I make myself available to support others’ journeys OR

  • am I actually dying for support and a place to project my own need to be heard/seen?

• Do I proactively go through my childhood memories OR

  • do I let them come to me?

• Does anything that I’m doing regarding healing make any sense in the larger scheme of human history OR

  • are our healing spaces another realm of storytelling to help humans feel magical and important?

• Do I take the biggest risk in life now like moving or traveling abroad OR

  • do I take a different kind of risk, like sitting in silence with myself for a long time, right here?

• Do I give myself a lot of structure OR

  • do I remove it all and find out who I am without it?

• Do I live my life for pleasure and presence OR

  • do I live with purpose and mission?

• Do I attempt to deflate my shame by sharing it here OR

  • do I work on it alone or with a small group of trusted people?

• Do I remove social media completely from my life due to my compulsive use of it and desire for likes OR

  • do I keep on being open and vulnerable and believe that my efforts to put that out there will create a positive outcome for me and others?

• Do I spend my money and go on a big adventure since “life’s short” OR

  • do I explore the moment here and now in the space that I’m in, connecting with me first before investing in a wandering enlightenment?

• Do I keep seeking OR

  • do I say this is enough and start to enjoy myself? Could I even?

• Do I seek the emotional and physical intimacy of my parents that I desperately wanted as a kid OR

  • is it too late and I’m too psychologically guarded?

• Do I seek non-trauma related connections with random humans OR

  • am I permanently seeing life from a certain lens that makes it nearly impossible for me to connect with a human without an existential component?

• Do I want strangers and acquaintances to be able to “comment” on my public healing work on myself OR

  • is this a time to be private and intimate with my closest?

• Are my physical aches and pains “just aging” OR

  • are my aches & pains infinite echoes of enduring, unprocessed trauma that I haven’t worked out yet?

• Do I stand up straight, make eye contact, and walk confidently in order to create confidence internally OR

  • do I curl up into my body and protect my fragile parts with my posture, honoring my pain and fear?

• Do I continue to consume the cornucopia of mental health content on social media that inspires me yet confuses me by feeling like an unorganizable, and at times dissonant, infodump that is overstimulating OR

  • do I find my Truths alone, in my self?

• Does any of this matter OR

  • does none of this matter?

• Will pursuing self-love cause me to lose weight, be more fit, and happy OR

  • will pursuing self-love caught me to gain weight and be more sad?

• When I take pictures of myself, do I pose, smile, change the angle to make myself look good OR

  • not take any pictures of myself at all, only take boring straight-on ones, or convince myself that I don’t find certain angles more flattering than others?

• Do I have solo sex despite feeling like it’s not doing for me what it used to do plus being a bit traumatizing and triggering OR

  • do I pursue it from a lens of exposure therapy / meditation?

• Do I have sex with others… those I am psychologically intimate with and those I am not? OR

  • do I need a break from sex unless I 100% for sure know that I want to have it because I want to have it and not because I’m socially anxious and feel pressure?

• Do I see the insight and love from others OR

  • do I need to start getting that insight and love from myself?

• Do I get a new laptop because this one is slow and frustrating OR

  • do I use my dissatisfaction as an opportunity to realize when what I have is enough?

• Do I do my best to clarify what I’m trying to communicate by anticipating how others might misunderstand it OR

  • do I leave it to everyone else to ask clarifying questions, reducing my disclaimer stress?

• Do I take a total rest from capitalism OR

  • do I soothe my financial anxiety by getting a job?

• Do I find a way to connect with our hunter/gatherer ancestry/nature OR

  • is that insincere, cultural appropriation, and an idealization of a time in our history that we’re romanticizing?