For a long time, I thought healing meant becoming a different person.
A better person.
A more spiritual person.
Someone more gifted, more awakened, more certain, more “together.”
I spent years comparing myself to other people.
Not just spiritually, but in every way.
I never felt smart enough, pretty enough, talented enough, or worthy enough. So when I entered spiritual spaces, I automatically believed everyone else fit the mold better than I did.
I thought spirituality looked a certain way.
Certain clothes.
Certain personalities.
Certain gifts.
Certain performances.
People who seemed deeply mystical, highly gifted, completely certain.
And while there is nothing wrong with any of those expressions, I quietly convinced myself that because I did not look like that, I must somehow be less than.
Less connected.
Less spiritual.
Less capable.
Back in 2014, after an awakening experience that deeply changed me, I remember thinking:
Why is this happening to me?
Who would believe I could know anything?
And at the same time:
Why not me?
That question stayed with me for years.
I spent so much time trying to become someone I thought people would accept spiritually that I lost sight of myself completely.
Even with photography, when the world suddenly began feeling alive to me — the trees, the clouds, the ground, people — it felt like I was seeing life differently for the first time. I began sharing my photographs, but once people started critiquing my work and telling me what it should be, I slowly disconnected from my own way of seeing.
I stopped trusting myself.
And I think I carried that same fear into healing work too.
With Reiki, I often worried people would think I was a fraud because I did not feel polished enough, gifted enough, or certain enough. Part of me still carried the old identity of “crazy Lisa,” the version of myself shaped by years of addiction, shame, and self-doubt.
So I kept holding myself back.
But eventually, something shifted.
I stopped trying so hard to become someone else.
I stopped trying to perform spirituality.
Stopped trying to prove healing.
Stopped trying to fit an image.
And what I found underneath all of it was surprisingly simple:
I am enough as I am in this moment.
Not because I became perfect.
Not because I mastered something.
Not because I finally looked spiritual enough.
But because healing was never about becoming someone else in the first place.
It was about returning to myself.
Now I understand that I do not need to perform in order to be worthy. I do not need a costume, a title, or a grand display to be connected.
I simply need to show up honestly.
And allow myself to be guided from there.