Waving the White Flag: The Discomfort of Becoming Whole

It’s been a while since I showed up here.
Not because I had nothing to say—
but because I’ve been sitting in the discomfort of not knowing how to say it.

Every time I try to inhabit a specific role—scientist, guide, consultant, author, sister, mother—I get tripped up.
Because everything is grey.
A deep, complicated grey of stories, perspectives, and contradictions.

And in that grey, I find hypocrisy.
Especially my own.
It’s the most uncomfortable mirror of all.

Lately, I’ve stopped trying to resolve the tension.
Instead, I’ve chosen to sit with it.
To notice that no one is judged more harshly than the version of myself I’m still trying to reconcile.

So this is me, waving a white flag to myself.
Not as an act of surrender, but as an act of radical acceptance.
This is what it is to build the bridge:
Messy. Uncomfortable.
And ultimately, mine to walk.

A few weeks ago, I had a healing session with my brother, Ryan. A somatic process that led me to a part of myself I’d left behind.
A fragment.
A version of me from a decade ago—brave, cycle-breaking, and determined.

She had done something incredible. But wrapped in shame, guilt, and the need to move on quickly, I’d left her in that moment. I didn’t even know I had.

In the session, a niggle under my right rib presented. And in connecting with that space, first words came, messy ones that tried to make it about something else, then she came forward. She reached for me.
And I—this version of me, today—took her hand.

We reunited.
And I cried with the kind of tears that say,
"Fuck, I've missed you"

Since then, I’ve felt excitement for bringing more of these fragments home—these parts of me that waited patiently for reunion. And I’ve stopped trying to explain it. Because how do you even describe the moment when an old self walks out of the shadows and reminds you of your wholeness? 

What even is this magic?

This is what happens when we wave the white flag.
When we stop demanding certainty and start welcoming curiosity.

This is what self-trust looks like.

Because for me, my experience is my ultimate truth.
And too much noise—too much of other people’s stories, systems, and prescriptions—pulls me from it.
From myself.

That’s when I stop being the main character in my own life and become a spectator. A victim.
This work, the quiet revolution of self-trust, is how we remember that we are the ones we've been waiting for.

There’s no path that’s neat, no transformation that doesn’t make a mess.

And this is mine.

If you’re here in the grey too—navigating discomfort, meeting old versions of yourself, learning to trust what’s true for you—
I see you.

You’re not broken.
You’re becoming.

Love Hayley