No, You Don’t Need to Be a ‘High Vibe’ Unicorn to Be Worthy of Healing
A sacred eye roll at toxic positivity and a love letter to your grief, your rage, and the healing that doesn’t sparkle on command.
Let’s Get One Thing Straight: I Am the High Vibe Unicorn
I light candles. I speak to my ancestors. I bless my bath water. There are crystals on my altar, palo santo in my drawer, and herbs drying in the kitchen. I have playlists for moon phases and oils for anxiety, and oracle decks that have known the full range of my mental health. I am a high-vibe person. I believe in the magic, the mystery, the medicine.
And I still think some of this “love and light” stuff is complete bullshit.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: if your spiritual practice can’t hold your grief, your anger, your confusion, or your wild, messy shadow, then it’s not healing. It is performance.
The Smile-Through-It Spiritual Trap
Let’s talk about “good vibes only.”
(Deep sigh.) It’s the phrase you’ll find stitched onto throw pillows, slapped onto water bottles, and tossed into conversation right when someone’s trying to be honest about their pain.
It’s the energy that tells you to “just raise your frequency” when you’re deep in trauma or “focus on the positive” when your world is falling apart.
There’s something insidious happening in spiritual spaces.
It’s soft.
It’s subtle.
It’s pastel-colored and dripping with glitter and affirmations that sound lovely but don’t land.
It’s the pressure to be radiant when you’re wrecked.
To smile through trauma.
To be grateful while grieving.
To act like you’re floating when your body feels like a collapsed building.
It’s the "love and light" script that tells us suffering is low vibration.
That pain is something to quickly reframe.
That if you’re not glowing, you’re not doing it right.
But here’s the thing.
You can’t vision-board your way out of a nervous system in survival mode.
You can’t bypass your shadow and expect your light to feel real.
You can’t shame your human parts into silence and expect your soul to feel seen.
If your healing doesn’t look good, doesn’t sound enlightened, doesn’t sparkle… welcome.
You’re not doing it wrong.
You’re doing it for real.
High Vibes Don’t Mean Hollow Vibes
I’m not anti-high vibe, clearly. I’m just anti-disconnection.
And that’s what bypassing does.
It disconnects us from ourselves. From each other. From the truth of what it means to be alive in a body that remembers.
Real healing is snot and silence.
It’s rage you didn’t know you were carrying.
It’s staring at the ceiling, wondering if this is it, if this is all there is.
It’s breaking open at the worst possible time, and not knowing how to put yourself back together.
And yet.
It’s still sacred.
Your grief isn’t a glitch.
Your anger isn’t a flaw.
Your anxiety isn’t proof that you’ve failed at healing.
You can be spiritual and still fall apart in the Target parking lot.
You can believe in miracles and still question everything at 2 a.m.
You can feel love and still feel rage and still be worthy of every kind of healing you long for.
The raw, the wrecked, the reaching, none of it disqualifies you.
You don’t have to earn your healing by pretending you’re okay.
You just have to show up.
As you are.
Heart trembling.
Voice cracking.
Still here.
A Ritual for the Sacred, Salty Self
For the days when you feel like your grief is too loud, your rage too inconvenient, your sadness too sticky—here’s a ritual that doesn’t ask you to fix anything. Just feel.
The "Not Today, Love & Light" Ritual
Grab a grounding object. A stone, a spoon, a dead plant. Anything real.
Put your feet on the floor.
Breathe like someone who belongs in their body (even if just barely today).
Say aloud:
“I am not a performance. I am a process.
“I am not too much. I am not too late. I am allowed to feel.”
Write one thing you're feeling that would make a spiritual influencer uncomfortable (Yes. That one.)
Burn it. Bury it. Eat it metaphorically. Or just let it sit there and exist.
That feeling doesn’t need to be cleared. It needs to be seen.
This Is What I Know
You are allowed to be undone and divine.
You are allowed to be magical and moody.
You are allowed to believe in healing and still feel like shit.
Healing isn’t a destination.
It’s a thousand tiny returns to yourself.
And not one of those moments requires perfection.
So no, you don’t have to be a glowing, levitating, blissed-out unicorn to be worthy.
But if you are one, and you’re a little cracked around the edges?
If your mane’s a mess and your crystals are dusty and you’re still trying anyway?
Come sit beside me.
We’re healing just fine.
Love today,
Heather 🌸