Vachon Imagined

Whenever I talk about healing, I often hear the same words:

“But it’s so hard.”

And from a physical perspective, they are not wrong.

It is hard.

It is grueling.

It is terrifying.

It is terrifying to let go of old stories. Terrifying to release identities we have carried for years, sometimes for a lifetime. To the body, this can feel like death itself, because the body is designed to survive. To protect. To defend. To remember danger. To reject what appears foreign.

Anything unfamiliar is met with suspicion.

Anything that threatens the known is often resisted.

This is not failure.

This is nature.

To the person who cannot yet see beyond fear, letting go feels like losing vision itself. It feels like surrendering the very thing that has guided them through life, even when that thing has also caused them pain.

But the person who lays all of this down, even for a moment, catches a glimpse of something else.

Freedom.

A freedom so quiet and so complete that it cannot be mistaken for anything else.

And once a person catches even the briefest glimpse of it, they often find themselves wanting to go further.

Deeper.

Toward the harmony beneath the struggle.

Toward the presence beneath the fear.

Toward the thing that loves.

It loves.

It does not hate.

It does not reject.

For to reject you would be to reject itself.

And it does not know how to do that.

Because it is not the actor.

You are.

You are the one who chooses.

You are the one who clings.

You are the one who releases.

You are the monument.

You are the life.

And when the monument finally falls, life remains.