07/12/2025
*worth the slightly longer read* ☕️ 🫶🏼
When Healing Becomes Performance
After nearly twenty years in drama education, I know a thing or two about performance. I’ve watched young people transform on stage, embody characters, find their voices through the art of showing. Performance has its place – it’s powerful, necessary even.
I’ve performed my own poetry at spoken word events, shared work that felt raw and true. But I didn’t need the audience, not really. I just needed to hear my own words out loud. It was cathartic, but it wasn’t about showing off. The events gave me a container, a reason to finish the poem, to stand up and speak it into being. But the healing happened in the writing, in the speaking – not in the witnessing.
That’s what I want my work to offer others – not a stage for their healing, but a container for it. A vehicle of support for their journey if they need it. The breathwork sessions, the massage treatments, the journaling workshops – these are structures that give you permission to do your own quiet, unseeable work.
But healing itself? Healing isn’t meant for an audience.
Lately I’ve noticed how the language of wellness has become strangely theatrical. We curate our growth. We showcase our breakthroughs. We narrate our healing journeys as if they’re meant to be witnessed, validated, applauded.
And I understand the impulse. I really do. When you’re in pain, when you’re working so hard to feel better, there’s something compelling about making that work visible. About proving – to others, to yourself – that you’re doing the work.
