18/05/2026
One thing I think we underestimate professionally and culturally is that healing does not always happen exclusively inside an office.
Please don’t misunderstand me:
I am a strong advocate for therapy, mental health support, and assisted healing. Therapy helped me survive some very difficult periods of workplace harm and prolonged stress.
But I also learned something important:
not all healing is clinical.
Some healing is environmental.
Some healing is ancestral.
Some healing is physical.
Some healing happens when the nervous system finally feels safe enough to exhale.
After prolonged workplace trauma, I eventually relocated temporarily to Puerto Rico to heal on my island.
And while I had already spent years in therapy, what ultimately helped regulate my nervous system most deeply was reconnecting with the land itself:
- walking barefoot in the sand,
- grounding in the ocean,
- feeling salt air on my skin,
- hearing the water,
- reconnecting with sunlight,
- reconnecting with community,
- reconnecting with stillness.
Even here in Massachusetts, I’ve realized how deeply I regulate through nature:
trees, plants, grass, air, sunlight, being outside barefoot whenever possible.
That’s one reason winter became so difficult for me while navigating prolonged stress. My nervous system grounds physically through connection with the natural world.
As professionals, especially high-performing ones, we often intellectualize healing so heavily that we forget we are still biological beings.
Sometimes the body does not need another strategy deck.
Sometimes it needs:
rest,
sunlight,
water,
movement,
quiet,
community,
and the feeling of safety again.
Healing is not one-size-fits-all.
And sometimes the land helps carry us back to ourselves. 🌴