“Go on a hike,” they say. “Make Sundays your meal prep day,” “When people hurt you, they’re just hurting themselves.”

All great advice for someone depressed, hurt, and scared for their future. I just didn’t know how any of these suggestions pertained to me.

I barely had the energy to get out of bed and do the dishes, let alone go on a hike. How are you supposed to create healthier habits that give you more energy when you have no energy to begin with? This was me.

There was even a point in my life where I would think about what I would wish for if I came across a genie in a lamp and he granted me three wishes. Yes, desperation makes you look for answers in all places. I desperately wanted things to change immediately with a flick of a wrist.

But as you would suspect, I was waiting for a long time and I never did find that magical lamp. I look back now and can still feel the desperation. I wanted change in my life but I didn’t want to have to change my life. I didn’t want to have to put in the work, I didn’t want to make Sundays my meal prep day (I still don’t), I didn’t want to be that person on a strict diet, I didn’t want to be the person who had to make hard decisions and say “no” to fun activities or schedule naps into my day.

Because that’s the harsh truth to changing your life–you actually have to change. Others don’t need to change, just you.

When I talk about my healing journey, that’s exactly what it is–a journey. To first check in with myself, figure out how I am feeling and what I need to support myself, then chisel away at how I can start applying different choices to my life. Inevitably, I’d fall off my wagon, feel disappointment in myself and start all over again. It’s exhausting. It’s uncomfortable. It’s annoying. And the progress can seem slow as Hell. But that’s when I find the most support from the land of the woo-woo.

It takes energy healing to get me to realize that part of my stuckness is that I don’t believe in my own worthiness. It takes tarot cards to give me hope and reassurance that different decisions will lead me to where I want to go. It takes crystals to give me courage to face my challenges and lessen my self doubts. It takes akashic records to give me perspective of my ancestral past, and by comparison, to allow me to enjoy all the blessings I currently have. It takes nature and grounding to realize how insignificant my struggles are in comparison to the universe that surrounds me. And it takes learning the skill of meditation to slow down, pause, and be present for the life I am living.

I’m at the point in my life where my new habits still mingle with the old. I still pop pills for a headache and sometimes to fall asleep, but I also take my vitamins in the morning. I fall back on the comfort of my vices when I have “hard days” then challenge myself to take breaks when I feel stronger. I skip yoga classes during the busy summer schedule but find myself prioritizing the recordings because I know showing up for myself always makes me feel better.

Discovering practices that are considered woo-woo has not given me immediate relief to my personal struggles or the answers to my problems. But what it has provided me with is a deeper connection with myself, a shift in my thinking that used to keep me in my old patterns and feeling stuck, and the courage to continue to do hard things. It’s these new woo-woo tools in my life that have given me the energy and strength to continue to do the hard work and bring about change in life by changing myself.

It’s all hard and will continue to be hard because ultimately there’s still a part of me that wishes life was just easy. Three-wishes easy. But as I continue to go on this journey, my wish is also changing. Perhaps it’s not an easy life I wish for but to live a life of ease. Because it’s only when I accomplish hard things that I develop a deeper love for myself and redefine my confidence from the inside out. I would receive neither from a life on easy street. So instead, the skills I develop from facing my personal challenges allows me to live my life authentically since I now know that I have what it takes.

Incorporating woo-woo into my life was a challenge in itself, mainly because trying something new with no proof of it working ran the high risk of dwindling the very limited energy I had in the first place. It was easier to spend my time wishing things were different.

But now, with new unexpected tools incorporated into my life, I don’t need three wishes. The magic isn’t in the woo-woo but the woo-woo gives me the confidence to continue believing in my own magic. This might not make sense to everyone and it hasn’t always made sense to me either but I know that I am shifting into the best version of me… and that is all I can wish for.

With love,

Ming-Cee