There’s a whole spectrum of human relationship —
and most of what we struggle with isn’t danger, but discomfort.
I keep seeing the messages —
those tidy spiritual slogans circulating through feeds and circles:
“Walk away from anyone who hurts you.”
“Cut off people who trigger you.”
“Release what no longer serves.”
Sounds clean.
Sounds powerful.
Sounds like sovereignty.
But real life isn’t a meme.
And healing isn’t an exit strategy.
Walking away from someone may give you temporary peace,
but if you haven’t turned toward the part of yourself
that reacts, collapses, flares, or fuses,
then the pattern simply follows you
into the next relationship,
the next home,
the next decade.
There is a time to step back.
There is a time to choose distance.
There is a time to stop contorting yourself
around someone else’s fear.
But “walking away” is not the medicine people think it is.
The deeper work — the work that actually restores you —
is reshaping your relationship with yourself.
Because the “other” is never just the other.
They are the mirror of your unhealed edges,
your unspoken boundaries,
your swallowed truths,
your inherited wiring.
Cutting people off is easy.
Facing the ways we abandoned ourselves
within those relationships
is not.
And no amount of spiritual language
turns avoidance into awakening.
I have walked away when I needed to —
not from people, but from the roles I once played.
Not from love, but from illusion.
Not from responsibility, but from self-erasure.
I didn’t stop loving.
I stopped lying.
I stopped shrinking.
I stopped fusing.
I stopped betraying myself
to keep the story stable.
That’s the work.
Not cutting people off like dead branches,
but learning to grow new roots inside myself
so another’s choices no longer determine my direction.
The holidays bring all of this into sharper focus —
family stories, old wounds, old reflexes,
the temptation to fall back
into a shape you’ve already outgrown.
But here is the real truth,
the one no meme dares to say:
You don’t heal by walking away from others.
You heal by walking back toward yourself.
ai- generated photo ~ bj 2025