I was alone in my room, staring at my computer, with exactly three uninterrupted hours before my husband and I would switch shifts and I would once again become responsible for a tiny human who believes sleep is a personal attack. This was my designated me time. I liked to start my day with some inner work before stepping into my workflow.
I had my self-care app open, a candle lit, and had just finished a few minutes of box breathing to help me focus. I shuffled my tarot cards while glancing at my weekly planner with boxes for habit tracking, which, like most weeks, showed strong ambition on Monday and the quiet disappearance of self-care by Thursday.
As I shuffled, I asked my daily question, “What lesson can I learn from today that will serve my personal success?”
Then I pulled three cards: Eight of Pentacles (reversed), Six of Cups (reversed), and Nine of Cups.
It wasn’t what I was expecting, but damn. It hit hard. My cards weren’t always gentle in their messages. Like a blunt friend who keeps it real with you, and cares too much about you to tiptoe around your feelings and tell you what you want to hear.
My reading called out my perfectionism. How I grip self-development so tightly that it stops being growth and becomes forced labor. If I do enough inner work with enough intensity, I’ll finally earn a gold star and a nervous system that doesn’t freak out at the smallest of things.
It offered the quieter truth underneath, that I’ve been living too much inside old stories and old pain, letting yesterday’s wounds set today’s pace instead of taking a breath and making room for fun somewhere in my day.
And it showed me when I stop forcing “perfect healing” and let myself play a little, everything integrates more naturally. Life could be satisfying, even dreamlike, without me having to wrestle it into shape.
After that, I couldn’t really focus. Perfectionism is something I had been actively working on for some time, and I’d learned to embrace the mess in other areas of life. But suddenly I was uncomfortably aware that my perfectionism hadn’t disappeared. It just transformed into something different—in the exact space I was working to grow from it.
So I did what any productivity-seeking adult would do with a scattered mind. I turned to social media for avoidance disguised as inspiration seeking.
Then I came across it. One of those “ChatGPT Prompts for Brutal Self-Awareness” posts. With my morning’s tarot reading still lingering on the edges of my mind, one question really jumped out at me: Based on the patterns you see in what I share with you, what beliefs or habits might be holding me back from what I want — and why?
“You have a deep, perceptive mind and a natural pull toward understanding why things happen — both in yourself and in the universe. That’s a gift. But sometimes that same curiosity can spiral into over-analysis, which keeps you circling the insight rather than embodying it. You don’t just want to know — you want to feel aligned. Yet because you hold yourself to such an emotionally intelligent standard, you can get caught in self-monitoring rather than self-living.
Let your growth be gentle curiosity, not correction. You don’t need to fix anything to deserve stillness. Try asking, “What if I’m already whole — and growth is just how I play with my wholeness?”
When you allow that thought to root, self-care becomes communion, not maintenance.”
Well, fuck you, too, AI bot. Apparently, my cards and AI had gotten together the night before and decided to choose violence for the day, and my mission of healing and personal growth were the agreed upon targets.
It all hit hard… because it was true.
I could even see it in my app for self-care and habit tracking. I was checking off items: breathing exercises, reflections, healthy habits like exercise and water breaks, but when I’d check my insights and mood breakdowns, it still showed days in the red or neutral gray.
I was reading self-help books and doing the work in therapy, but I think I forgot to actually live life along the way. And wasn’t that the goal to begin with? Healing for the sake of enjoying life and not being tied down by my past?
While I was no longer spending my days weighed down by my past, I was still spending every day focused on overcoming it. I wasn’t living life. The only thing I was looking forward to was a non-existent finish line of “healed.” I knew I was on the right track, but I still felt unsettled and like something was missing.
I was certainly growing, and I could see it in my habits, mindset, and emotional regulation. Yet, a sense of heaviness remained. Satisfaction and genuine happiness stayed just out of reach. Don’t get me wrong, I had my good days, but it wasn’t the consistent metaphorical breath of fresh air I had been striving for.
A new weight sank in my chest. It wasn’t tight or restrictive, but it was heavy. I could almost feel my chest concave briefly with a solid thunk of its impact. I suddenly couldn’t wrap my head around the weird development-as-performance trap I’d fallen into. I wasn’t even trying to impress anyone. I was performing for myself.
That week, I brought it all to my therapist. As her face softened and a gentle smile formed on her lips, she confirmed my discovery in her eyes before she even affirmed it with her words.
She pointed out it wasn’t a personal failure, and I shouldn’t stomp out all the hard work I had been doing. She suggested it was time to shift my growth strategy to a more ‘lived-in’ perspective. The rest of our session focused on what healing through living instead of self-monitoring would look like, and more importantly, what it would feel like.
The following day, when it was time to sit down with my designated me time, I decided not to overhaul the habits I’d worked hard to build, but shifted how I approached them.
Instead of focusing on fixing myself, I was going to focus on caring for myself.
My focus wouldn’t be on what I still had to learn from my day, but how I could move through my day while supporting my self-care. I wanted to truly embody my healing instead of tasking it.
As I shifted my perspective on my healing journey, I noticed over time my self-care habits felt more fulfilling instead of draining. I didn’t dread doing things for myself, but looked forward to them. It wasn’t time taken away from productivity. It was time that recharged me so I could show up more fully in moments where I needed to be productive.
My breathing became supportive exercises, not homework to complete before the day was over. I allowed myself things and activities that brought me joy, instead of treating everything fun like rewards to be earned. Healing is something that happens alongside life, not instead of it.
As I shuffled those tarot cards during my next reading, I asked a new question—one that I still ask to this day as a part of my pre-work grounding ritual. How can I be successful today while nourishing my nervous system?
Healing didn’t happen because I pushed harder. It really began when I trusted myself to live life in the growth I had nurtured and embrace the journey instead of focusing on ‘healed’ as a destination.
It’s cliché, but I finally understood why growth and healing are a lifelong process and why the journey itself is the destination. Imagine that.
