Mica Magik blog

Walls Down: What The Last of the Moon Girls Taught Me About Staying Open

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Sages Book Club Wrap Up: The Last of the Moon Girls by Barbara Davis

If there’s one thread that kept surfacing for me through The Last of the Moon Girls, it’s softening. Letting your heart crack back open after it’s been hurt, instead of sealing it shut for good and calling that strength. It sounds simple written out like that. In practice? Not so much. I’ve spent a lot of years proving exactly how not simple it is.

For most of my twenties and into my thirties, I handled being hurt by someone by clocking out. I’d find out they lied to me, and that was it. No conversation, no “can we talk about this,” no closure text explaining why I was leaving. You were just gone, blocked, deleted, removed from my life with the efficiency of someone closing a tab they never meant to open. I told myself this was healthy boundaries. I was protecting my peace. Looking back, I wasn’t doing that at all. I was hardening, and calling it wisdom.

If you’ve made it to the end of the book, and since you’re here, I’m guessing you have, you watched Lizzy do something pretty similar. When the town turned on her family, she didn’t just protect herself, she sealed herself off completely. Walls up, doors locked, the whole production. She left town the moment she was able to and didn’t come back for years. Honestly, fair. The town was genuinely cruel to her. Sometimes hardening is the only thing that gets you through a season, and leaving is sometimes the only way to survive it.

But it was coming home, learning from Evvie, spending real time with Andrew, sitting with her mother again, that slowly cracked something open in her. Not because anyone forced it. Because she let it. She started to believe that maybe not every disappointment needs a permanent wall built around it, and that people, even ones who hurt you, can earn their way back through showing up differently.

That’s the part I’m clearly still in the middle of learning myself. Cutting someone off completely isn’t always the wrong move. Sometimes it’s exactly the right one. But I’ve started wondering how many people I shut out for good who maybe deserved a conversation instead of silence, and how many relationships I ended permanently over something that, with a little time and a little grace, might have actually been different the second time around.

Here at Aletheia, we talk constantly about truth, which is literally what the word means, but staying open doesn’t mean ignoring the truth of how someone treated you. It means asking a harder, more honest question. Is this person actually unsafe, or am I just scared? Those are two very different things, and only one of them actually requires a wall.

Lizzy didn’t let her guard down for everyone. She let it down for the people who kept showing up, who were patient with her, who gave her room to come back to herself slowly. That’s discernment, not naivety. There’s a real difference between staying open and staying exposed, and most of us, myself included, could stand to get a little better at telling them apart.

Thank you for reading this one with me, Sages. The Last of the Moon Girls asked us some uncomfortable questions about safety, trust, and what we do with the people who hurt us, and I don’t think any of us walk away with clean answers. That’s kind of the point.

So tell me, what message or thread are you walking away with from this book? Respond in the comments, I’d genuinely love to know what stuck with you.

With you in all of it,

Kristin

What Lizzy Knows That I Forgot

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

There is a tattoo on my body that says "truth."

I got it at a time in my life when truth felt like the most important thing I could chase. Relationship after relationship had unraveled into lies, and I had decided: never again. I would be the person who looked directly at things, who didn't flinch, who found out. I was relentless about it, honestly. If something felt off, I dug. I asked the uncomfortable question. I stayed in the conversation past the point where most people would have walked away.

I believed that knowing the truth, whatever it was, would always set me free.

Reading these latest chapters of The Last of the Moon Girls, I found myself watching Lizzy with a kind of quiet recognition. She is doing exactly what I used to do: pushing past the discomfort of a town that very clearly does not want her asking questions, pursuing something that most people around her would rather stay buried. She is dogged in the best possible way. She is refusing to let the story be what everyone has decided it is.

And I admire her for it. Genuinely.

But I also kept thinking: Lizzy, I've been where you are. And it doesn't always go the way you're hoping.

The last time I went searching for the truth, it was a few years ago. And I think it might have been the last time.

Here is what I didn't know then, or maybe what I knew and chose not to think about: I didn't actually want the truth. What I wanted was for the truth to be something other than what it was. I went looking because some part of me thought I could outrun the feeling I already had, or maybe confirm it wrong. And when the truth showed up, it didn't set me free. It just sat there. It still does, actually, on certain days when I'm not paying attention and something small brushes up against it.

So I look at Lizzy's situation now and I see a distinction I wasn't able to make when I was younger. She isn't searching for the truth to feel better. She isn't looking for confirmation that her life is the way she hoped it was. She is searching for the truth because her grandmother's name has been dragged through decades of mistrust and suspicion, and Lizzy is the only one left who cares enough to clear it.

That's a different kind of truth-seeking. That's one I can get behind.

If I were in her shoes, I would do exactly what she's doing. No question.

But the kind of truth I used to hunt, the kind that was really just a question about whether someone loved me the way I needed, whether someone was who I hoped they were? I think I've learned my lesson there. Some truths don't liberate you. They just live in you. And sometimes the cost of knowing is higher than you're prepared to pay.

The Aletheia Lens:

Lizzy's pursuit raises a question worth sitting with: what are you searching for, and why?

There is truth that restores. Truth that clears a name, corrects a record, brings something wrongfully hidden back into the light. And there is truth that we seek because we are afraid, or because we want someone to prove us wrong, or because we are not ready to feel what we already know.

Both are valid. Neither is wrong. But they ask different things of us.

This week's reflection prompts:

Where in your life are you pursuing truth for someone else's healing, and where are you pursuing it for your own peace of mind? Is there a difference in how each one feels?
Have you ever found a truth that cost you more than you expected? What did you do with it?
Is there something you already know, deep down, that you've been hoping someone else will confirm or contradict? What would it mean to just... let yourself know it?

As always, I'd love to hear what this week's chapters brought up for you. Drop your thoughts in the comments or bring them to our next gathering.

With you in all of it, Kristin

You Can Go Home Again (But You Won’t Be the Same Person Who Left)

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

I’m about a quarter of the way through The Last of the Moon Girls and I’ve already had to put it down a few times just to sit with what I’m feeling.

Not because it’s hard to read. Because it’s a little too relatable.

Lizzy’s whole internal back-and-forth about returning to Moon Girl Farm got me. That specific kind of dread where you love a place, but you also know it has a pull to it that could mess with everything you’ve worked to build for yourself. I know that feeling. I’ve been there.

The Nashville Years

When I moved to Nashville, I wasn’t running away from New Hampshire exactly. But I was definitely running toward something, and part of that required putting some distance between me and the familiar. There’s a version of yourself that only gets to exist when nobody around you remembers who you used to be.

When it came time to come back, it got complicated. Not in a dramatic way, just in that quiet internal way where you’ve got two fears running at the same time. One was: going back feels like going backwards. The other was: if I go back, I might never leave again. Both felt real. Both were worth looking at.

What I kept coming back to was this: I was a genuinely different person from who I was when I left. So coming back didn’t have to mean going back to who I was. The place would be the same. I wouldn’t.

What It’s Actually Been Like

And honestly? That turned out to be true. This chapter in New Hampshire has brought some really brilliant women into my life. It’s given me the space to grow in ways I didn’t fully see coming. And getting to be close to my parents, to actually show up for them as they get older, that means a lot to me. More than I expected.

But I’d be lying if I said that second fear just went away. Sometimes I still wonder: is this it? Is this where I stay? And I don’t actually want that question to disappear. There are places I’ve been drawn to for a long time that I still need to see. That pull toward something new isn’t restlessness. It’s more like unfinished business with the world.

I think you’re allowed to love where you are and still feel the tug of somewhere else. Those two things can exist at the same time.

So Yeah, I Get Lizzy

She spent years building a life that was hers, separate from the weight of that farm and everything attached to it. Going back risks messing with all of that. Or at least that’s the fear: that the place will remember who you were, even when you’ve done so much work to become someone different.

What I keep sitting with as I read is this: sometimes the thing we most dread returning to is also the thing that holds a piece of our story we haven’t fully dealt with yet. Not because we have to stay there, but because we might need to go back through it to actually move forward.

Reading Through the Aletheia Lens

A few things to sit with as you read:

Is there a place, a relationship, or a version of your life you’ve avoided going back to? What’s the fear underneath that? Is it that you’ll get stuck there, or that it might confirm something about yourself you’d rather not look at?

When you left something behind to become more fully yourself, what did that leaving actually cost you?

Is there a difference for you between going back and returning? One feels like defeat. The other feels like choice. Which one shows up in your body when you think about the chapters you’ve closed?

I’m still reading. Still very much in it with Lizzy. Still sorting through my own stuff about places and belonging and what it means to have a life that feels a little too big for one location.

I have a feeling this book is going to keep doing that to me. The good ones always do.

Tell me where you are in the book and what’s been hitting you. I want to hear it.

With love,
Kristin

Our First Read: The Last of the Moon Girls by Barbara Davis

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Let me tell you how this book found us, because I love this part.

My friend Misty read it on her own and loved it so much that when she told me about it, she said she would read it again just to do it with us. That is the kind of book recommendation that you don't ignore. When someone who has already finished a book is willing to go back to page one for you, you listen. So I listened, and the moment I started reading about nine generations of gifted women healers on a lavender farm in New England, I knew this was the one. This was going to be our first book.

Here's what you're getting into:

Lizzy Moon spent eight years building a life in New York that looked nothing like the one she came from. Her family has tended Moon Girl Farm in Salem Creek for nine generations, a long line of gifted healers and herbalists who were loved by some and feared by most. Lizzy wanted no part of any of it. She left, built something new, and did a pretty convincing job of pretending the farm and everything it represented wasn't still living somewhere inside her.

Then her grandmother Althea dies.

She goes back to settle the estate and sell the farm, and what she finds waiting for her is an unsolved murder, a town that spent years blaming Althea for it, and a journal Althea left behind called the Book of Remembrances, written specifically to help Lizzy finally step into the gifts she has been running from her entire adult life.

What unfolds is part mystery, part magical realism, part love story, and entirely about what it means to carry a lineage you didn't ask for, to inherit gifts that also make you a target, and to finally stop outrunning the truest version of yourself. It is witchy and warm and human in the best possible way. Reviewers have compared it to Practical Magic and I think that is exactly right.

From an Aletheia lens, this book is rich. We are going to talk about ancestral healing, inherited gifts, the wisdom locked inside family trauma, botanical medicine, forgiveness, and the very specific kind of self-sabotage that looks like playing it safe. There is so much here and I cannot wait to dig into it with you.

Your reading guide is attached to this post. It has a full breakdown of the themes we'll be exploring, the reading schedule with all three dates, and a set of opening journal prompts to sit with before you even start reading. I would genuinely suggest reading the guide first. It will shift the way you come to the book.

We start March 1st. First live is March 25th at 8PM ET.

Go get the book. Then go on over to the community thread and introduce yourself.

With love,

Kristin

Day 21 — Still In Between

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

I’m getting better at being okay in the in-between.

That feels like the most honest way to close this series.

Over the past 21 days, I’ve written about awareness, resistance, effort, protection, shame, self-respect, and the cost of forcing myself to change. I’ve revisited old patterns, examined failed attempts, and tried to untangle the difference between pressure and integrity.

And yet, nothing about my external life looks radically different.

The patterns I’ve been writing about haven’t vanished. The desires I have for change are still there. I haven’t arrived at a polished version of myself. I’m not standing at the end of this series with a breakthrough or a before-and-after story.

But something has shifted.

I don’t go to sleep every night running an internal audit of what I could have done better or how I should have been more. I’m not constantly measuring myself against an invisible standard of who I think I’m supposed to be. There is less urgency in my self-talk. Less internal pressure to fix, optimize, or accelerate.

Instead, I’ve noticed a different thought rising more often.

I deserve more.

Not more discipline.
Not more force.
Not more ways to improve myself.

More alignment.
More honesty.
More relationships and work that don’t require me to betray myself in order to maintain them.

For a long time, the in-between felt like stagnation. If I wasn’t actively changing, I assumed I was avoiding something or falling behind. I thought growth had to look like visible progress, measurable shifts, tangible outcomes.

Now I see that the in-between has been doing its own quiet work.

It’s where awareness settles instead of being rushed into action. It’s where old strategies lose their authority. It’s where I begin to understand why I did what I did, instead of just judging it. It’s where self-respect slowly rebuilds itself after years of self-criticism.

It makes sense that I’m still here.

It makes sense that understanding something doesn’t instantly reorganize behavior. It makes sense that wanting change and being ready for it are not always the same thing.

If anything, the most meaningful shift has been in how I relate to myself while I’m here. There’s less war. Less accusation. Less insistence that I should be further along by now.

There’s more steadiness.

And maybe that’s enough for this season.

If you’re still in-between, still wanting something different but not fully there yet, that makes sense. Awareness is not the same thing as embodiment. Clarity does not guarantee immediacy. Sometimes the most important change is how you speak to yourself while nothing else appears to be changing.

That has been the real work for me.

Today’s prompt:
What feels different in me now, even if nothing around me has changed?

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to trust what feels steadier than it did before.

Day 20 — What Actually Moves Me

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

I have always been someone who wants to know more, do more, be more. It’s in my DNA. I don’t really know how to exist any other way.

Long before I began any formal self-development journey around 2014, before I realized I didn’t actually like myself in certain ways, I was already someone who pushed to improve. But it didn’t feel like shame then. It felt like curiosity. It felt like integrity.

In sports, I practiced harder than anyone. I wanted to understand every position, not just the one I played. I wanted to improve every practice, every game. When it came to learning, I was the same way. I love knowledge. I could memorize almost anything, but more than that, I genuinely wanted to understand. School was easy not just because I was capable, but because I cared.

There was a time when striving didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like alignment.

Then life complicated things.

As I approached college and moved through those early years, I started learning harder lessons. Mostly around love. Around intimacy. Around betrayal. I made choices I’m not proud of. I reacted in ways that didn’t align with who I wanted to be.

In my first serious relationship, when I was cheated on, I went out of my way to be a version of myself I didn’t respect. I hurt back. I reacted. I tried to reclaim power in ways that ultimately didn’t feel good to live inside.

But something shifted after that.

When I entered another relationship, I knew I didn’t want to be that person anymore. So I wasn’t. Almost every relationship since then has ended in betrayal, but I never responded the same way again. I had self-respect. I didn’t abandon myself in the process.

That kind of change didn’t come from shame. It came from an internal knowing. It came from alignment.

The same was true with my body before everything spiraled. When I was smaller and gained five or ten pounds over the holidays or in a safe relationship, I didn’t attack myself. I didn’t spiral. I just thought, I want to wear that skirt again. Let me take care of that. There was no moral judgment. No commentary about my worth. Just care.

That’s the place I’m trying to remember.

I’m not trying to become someone new. I’m trying to return to the version of me who moved from self-worth instead of trying to earn it.

Because here’s what I see now. The five years of forcing myself to lose weight didn’t just fail physically. They rewired something internally. Trying became synonymous with self-attack. Effort became dangerous. If I try and fail, I might stop loving myself again. And that’s a risk I haven’t been willing to take.

So I stopped trying.

Not because I don’t want change. I do. I want to feel strong. I want to feel comfortable in my body. I want to feel aligned with myself again.

But right now, I’m in this in-between space where I know the only way forward is through self-respect, not self-rejection. And I’m still rebuilding that foundation.

What actually moves me isn’t pressure. It isn’t shame. It isn’t urgency.

It’s the quiet internal shift of, I deserve to show up differently.

I’ve lived from that place before. I know what it feels like. I just haven’t fully found my way back to it yet.

And maybe that’s okay.

Today’s prompt:
Am I trying to prove my worth, or honor it?

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to notice the difference.

Day 19 — The Cost of Forcing Myself

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

From 2016 to 2021, I tried everything I could to lose weight. And I don’t mean casually trying a few things. I mean I threw myself into it. Diets. Programs. Strict nutrition plans. Workout regimens. Accountability systems. Coaches. Trainers. I was disciplined. I was committed. I was serious about it.

And nothing worked.

Every time I tried something new and it didn’t produce the result I wanted, I didn’t just feel disappointed. I turned on myself. The voice in my head was relentless. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you do this? You always fail.

It became a loop. I would push hard, feel hopeful for a moment, then watch the effort collapse. When it did, I would shame myself for not having enough willpower. Then I would try again, this time harder. For five years, I lived inside that cycle.

It didn’t just affect my body. It affected my entire life.

I stopped wanting to leave the house. I mostly spent time with my sister. I didn’t date. I didn’t meet new people. I avoided situations where I might feel exposed. I told myself it was temporary, that I would re-enter life once I “fixed” the problem.

The forcing and failing created a massive self-worth issue that I didn’t recognize at first. I thought the issue was my body. It took about a year to understand that what was really unraveling was how I saw myself. And it has taken many more years to slowly unwind what I wound so tightly around my identity.

The deeper cost wasn’t the weight. It was the war.

I was trying to eliminate a version of myself I didn’t accept. Every attempt was fueled by rejection. I believed pressure would create change because that had always been my strategy in other areas of my life. Work harder. Be more disciplined. Push through. Earn the outcome.

But this time, the strategy backfired.

Instead of building trust with myself, I eroded it. Instead of creating momentum, I created fear. Trying began to feel dangerous because failing meant another round of self-attack. It makes sense that I pushed the way I did. That’s what I knew how to do. In many parts of my life, force had worked. But here, it came at a cost I didn’t see until much later.

I’m still unwinding that cost.

I still want to lose weight. I still care about my health. But I cannot unknow what forcing myself did to my sense of worth. I cannot pretend that shame is a sustainable strategy.

Sometimes the pattern isn’t the most harmful thing. Sometimes it’s the way we try to eliminate it that does the deeper damage.

It makes sense that I did what I knew. It also makes sense that it didn’t work.

Today’s prompt:
Where has forcing myself cost me more than the pattern ever did?

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to see the cost clearly.

Day 18 — What the Pattern Is Protecting

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

There’s a moment that comes once you stop blaming yourself for not changing and start asking a different question.

Not “What’s wrong with me?”
But “What is this protecting?”

This shift has been one of the most important parts of this process for me. When I look at the patterns that keep returning, even after awareness and effort, I can see now that they aren’t random. They aren’t failures of discipline or proof that I don’t want change badly enough.

They’re doing a job.

For a long time, I thought safety meant comfort or familiarity. But safety runs deeper than that. Safety is about minimizing risk, especially emotional risk. It’s about avoiding collapse, instability, rejection, or loss of identity. When I started looking at my patterns through that lens, a lot of things made more sense.

One place this became very clear for me was around work.

In 2024, I lost my job. And for the next six months, I forced myself to find another full-time role. I pushed hard. I applied relentlessly. I told myself I needed stability, security, and something that looked acceptable and responsible from the outside.

During that time, there were opportunities to work differently. To consult. To build something more aligned. But I couldn’t really see them as viable options. My system wasn’t interested in experimentation. It wanted safety, fast.

Looking back, that wasn’t a lack of courage. It was protection.

Full-time work represented predictability, income, identity, and relief from uncertainty. My nervous system chose what it believed would stabilize me most quickly, even if it wasn’t a perfect fit.

Then in 2025, I lost my job again.

Same external event. Completely different internal experience.

This time, I didn’t panic. I didn’t force myself back into something that felt wrong. I pivoted almost seamlessly into working differently, in a way that felt more aligned and sustainable for me. I had capacity. I had trust. I had options I could actually consider.

The pattern didn’t change because I suddenly became braver or wiser. It changed because the conditions were different.

Even now, when family members suggest that a full-time job might be easier or safer, I feel something very clear in my body. Not defensiveness. Not rebellion. Just a quiet knowing that it isn’t my path anymore.

That clarity didn’t come from forcing myself to change. It came from understanding what I needed in order to feel safe enough to choose differently.

This is what I’m learning to see more clearly. The patterns that resist change are often the ones that protected us when we didn’t have better options. They kept us functioning. They helped us survive instability. They made sense at the time.

That doesn’t mean they need to run our lives forever. But it does mean they deserve to be understood before they’re asked to loosen.

I’m still learning how to sit with this. How to respect the intelligence of my system without letting it make every decision for me. How to thank a pattern for what it offered without asking it to keep doing the same job indefinitely.

There’s no instruction here. No strategy. Just a widening of the frame.

Sometimes change doesn’t come from pushing past resistance.
It comes from understanding why resistance makes sense.

Today’s prompt:
What might this pattern be protecting me from losing?

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to notice what safety means for me right now.

Day 17 — When Effort Was Never the Answer

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

I want to build directly on what I shared yesterday.

I talked about my long struggle with weight gain, how for years I tried everything I could think of to lose weight, and how no matter how much effort I applied, the number just kept going up. Then something unexpected happened. When I stopped trying to lose weight altogether, I stopped gaining it.

At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening. It felt counterintuitive. Effort had always worked for me before. If I wanted something badly enough, I pushed. I applied discipline. I followed the plan. And eventually, I got there.

But this was different.

No matter how hard I tried, my body didn’t respond. In fact, it pushed back harder. And now, looking back, almost five years later, I can see something I couldn’t see then.

I wasn’t efforting from care.
I was efforting from rejection.

I was trying to lose weight because I didn’t like my body. Because I thought it was a problem to solve. Because I wanted to escape the discomfort I felt living inside it. All of my effort was aimed at getting away from myself, not toward myself.

And in doing that, I missed something fundamental.

I had forgotten how to love myself. Period.

Not love myself once the weight was gone. Not love myself if I proved I could change. Love myself as I was. Without conditions.

Every plan, every reset, every new attempt was doomed because it was built on the same foundation, the belief that my body needed fixing before it deserved care. Effort framed that way was never going to work. It could only create more resistance.

When I stopped trying, when I stopped treating my body like an enemy, something softened. The constant push eased. The shame spiral lost momentum. And without trying to change anything at all, the weight gain stopped.

I want to be very clear here. This is not a success story.

I still want to lose weight. I still want to feel healthier and more comfortable in my body. That desire hasn’t gone anywhere. And I also know that if I want change to happen, it has to come from love. Love for my body. Love for myself.

The truth is, I’m not fully there yet.

I’m still in the in-between. I can see the conditions that matter now, but I’m still learning how to live from them. I know effort alone isn’t the answer, but I’m still figuring out what effort looks like when it’s rooted in care instead of rejection.

What has changed is this, I can finally see the resistance clearly.

The resistance wasn’t laziness.
It wasn’t lack of discipline.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want change badly enough.

The resistance was asking me to stop trying to solve something with tools that couldn’t work in the state I was in. It was asking me to build a different relationship with myself first.

That doesn’t mean I’m done. It just means I’m no longer fighting the wrong battle.

Today’s prompt:
What conditions might need to change before effort can actually help?

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to notice what support might be missing.

Day 16 — When the Pattern Comes Back

kristin@micamagik.com (Kristin Eastman) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

I’ve been here more times than I can count with my weight.

Until I was about thirty six or thirty seven, my weight barely changed. I could eat whatever I wanted, and if I gained five or ten pounds, exercise took care of it in a few weeks. My body felt predictable. Responsive. Cooperative.

Then in 2015, something shifted. I started gaining twenty five to thirty pounds a year, every year, until 2020. Over those five years, I tried everything I could think of to fight it. Every diet. Every exercise program. Every reset, plan, or promise.

I could do a Whole30 successfully. I’d lose twenty pounds, feel hopeful again, and then on day thirty one I’d go right back to eating the way I always had. And every time, I’d gain back more than I lost. The cycle repeated until I was up almost one hundred pounds.

I was desperate. And I was defeated.

I was also getting blood work and labs done, trying to find a reason. Every doctor told me the same thing. I was perfectly healthy, except for being obese. That word landed hard. Before this point in my life, if I wanted something or wanted to be good at something, I did it. I worked three jobs while getting my master’s degree. I pushed through hard things. I figured things out.

Not being able to lose the weight broke something in me.

I didn’t love myself anymore. I beat myself up constantly. Every failed attempt fed a shame spiral. I would try a new fad, hope this one would be different, and when it wasn’t, I blamed myself. I was embarrassed by how I looked. I didn’t want old friends to see me. I didn’t want to meet new people. I stopped dating. I stopped putting myself out there.

The pattern kept returning, no matter how badly I wanted it to change.

When I moved back to New Hampshire from Tennessee in 2021, something shifted, but not in the way I expected. I decided I was done making my weight the problem I was trying to solve. I hired a life coach. I read The High Five Habit by Mel Robbins. And I started doing something that felt almost ridiculous at first.

Every morning, I told myself I loved me.

I stood in the mirror and pointed out things I liked about my body. I started to accept a body I didn’t recognize as my own. Slowly, I began to love it, not for how it looked, but for everything it carried me through. Everything it did for me without complaint.

And something surprising happened.

I stopped gaining weight.

I want to be really clear here, because this part matters. I still want to lose weight. I want to feel healthier. I want to feel more comfortable in my body. That desire didn’t disappear. It hasn’t resolved itself.

What changed is my relationship to trying.

Trying now feels dangerous. It feels like opening the door back into that same shame spiral. It feels like inviting failure in before I even begin. Wanting to try and being scared to try now exist at the same time.

So when the pattern comes back, it isn’t because I haven’t tried enough. It’s because I’ve tried so many times that my system remembers what it cost me. The familiar isn’t just easy. It’s safer than risking another collapse into self-blame.

This is where I’m still standing. Wanting change. Knowing I want it. And also knowing how much it hurt the last time I reached for it.

That’s the in-between I’m living in now. Not apathy. Not avoidance. Not ignorance. Just a very real hesitation shaped by experience.

Today’s prompt:
What pattern do I keep returning to, even after I try to change it?

I’m not trying to resolve that immediately.
I’m just learning to notice what the return might be protecting me from.