The Water Can’t Clear If You’re Not Honest: How Can We Heal Ourselves and Live Closer to Our Truth with Ritual & Community?

Susan Hough, Author & Spiritual™ Life Coach at Living Your Gifts.

Trauma doesn’t always sneak in quietly.
Sometimes it walks right in—bold, unapologetic—and dares you to do what you’ve always done.
And sometimes, even when I see it, name it, feel it rising… I still let it lead.

Not because I want to suffer.
But because I know how to survive that way.
Because pain is familiar, and healing?
Healing is slow. Quiet. Uncertain.

So I ask myself:
Why am I choosing this—again?
Is this love?
Or just the normal I’ve always known?
Am I overlooking something that’s hurting me because I’ve been trained to do that?

Sometimes I follow the pain instead of the healing.
It’s not what I want to do—it’s just what I know.
Because trauma doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers:
“Don’t speak.”
“Don’t stir it up.”
“You’re too much.”

And when I don’t listen to the whisper, it gets louder.
It starts to roar.
And when it roars, I’ve made choices I regret.
I’ve walked away from people I never really let in.
Or I’ve hurt someone, not out of malice, but out of unspoken wounds taking the wheel.

That’s why I’ve had to teach myself something radical:
Speak it while you’re still in it. Even when it’s messy. Even when it’s half-formed.

Because the longer I stay silent, the easier it becomes to twist the story—
to turn pain into blame, to call someone else the villain,
instead of saying the hardest truth of all:
“I chose this.”

And sometimes, if you fool yourself long enough,
you actually start to believe the story you’ve created.
You stop asking real questions and start talking smack about someone else
instead of saying, “This was my decision. I stayed. I allowed this.”

That’s when the victim takes over.
Not the innocent part of you that was once hurt, but the part that doesn’t want to see.

Because seeing the truth means facing how often I’ve abandoned myself. And if abandonment is my original trauma, then every time I lie to myself to stay safe,
every time I pretend not to feel what I feel,
I keep that wound wide open.

So I come back to this word, again and again:
Truthfulness.

Not truth as punishment, but truth as medicine.
Because when I speak from my truth—gently, kindly, and clearly—
I begin to reclaim myself.
I stop feeding the story that I’m too broken to love or be loved.
I start asking, “How can I care for this pain today?”

And today, I didn’t let trauma lead.
I didn’t fall into the loop.
I saw the wound. I felt its ache.
And instead of collapsing into it, I asked: “How can I take care of you today?”

And I did.
Tomorrow, I’ll try again.
And each time I do, I get a little closer to the me before the trauma.
Not someone perfect or polished.
Someone true.

We all carry some form of addiction.
Not just to substances, but to our own patterns—
to the drama, to the cycle, to the story that’s familiar even when it hurts.
And no matter the method we choose for healing—therapy, recovery groups, rituals, stillness—there’s one thing we all need:

Community.

The kind of community that Sobonfu Somé spoke of.
Where pain wasn’t hidden.
Where you weren’t pushed away for struggling.
You were called in.
Held.
Witnessed.
Not fixed.
Not judged.
Just seen.

We don’t live in that kind of village anymore.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t create it.
We can build it, bit by bit, by choosing truth over performance.
By choosing presence over perfection.

And let’s not forget—we live in a culture that sells perfection like salvation.
Just scroll through Instagram and you’d think everyone has it figured out.
Perfect family. Perfect body. Perfect answers.

But let’s be real:

Nobody has a perfect family.
Nobody’s perfect.
Everybody has shit.

The danger isn’t just in pretending—it’s in believing the pretending is real.
It’s in waiting to be “ready” to show up as yourself.
But healing doesn’t wait.
And the people who are meant for you won’t either.

You don’t have to be fully healed to be worthy.
You just have to be honest.

And maybe you’re like me—
someone who constantly scans:
Am I okay? Am I doing it right? Am I being my best self?
That kind of vigilance can wear you out.
Because when you scan too much, you stop hearing yourself.

You do have to scan—but not so much that you forget to trust.
And trust, like healing, is built in relationship.
Which is why we need community more than ever.

But how do we create it?

You find your people.
You stop pretending.
You ask for help—from a counselor, a friend, a guide.
You show up as yourself.
You build it for your children.
You build it for the next generation.
Because without it, we’re failing.
And we don’t have to.

And here’s something else we need to name clearly:
Loneliness is a thing in our culture.
A quiet epidemic.
We weren’t built to live alone in little boxes, glued to phones,
scrolling through filtered lives that look shinier than our own.

It’s easy to feel like you’re the only one struggling
when all you see are other people’s highlight reels.

But I learned early—thankfully—what’s behind the curtain.
I was hanging out with a guy who worked with some of the biggest rock 'n rollers in the world.
And guess what?
They weren’t happier than me.
They had pain just like I did.
More money? Sure. But money doesn’t mend your soul.
It doesn’t fix your patterns.
It doesn’t hold you in the dark.

We all have grief.
We all have shit.
And none of us were meant to carry it alone.

That’s why we need community that’s real.
That’s why we need economics that serve everyone,
not just the few at the top who are silently unraveling inside.
We need systems—and more importantly, cultures—
that value authenticity over appearance,
connection over performance,
and truth over perfection.

Because we’re all in this together.

We heal in the truth.
We rise in community.
We move forward—together.

Not through pretending, but by remembering who we really are.
By taking one honest step.
Not a leap. Just one true step—toward ourselves, and each other.

And when the noise is too loud—
when the grief, the pain, the shame starts to blur everything—
you come back to ritual.

Not performance.
Not perfection.
But ritual.

A place to bring your sorrow.
To lay down your rage.
To weep honestly, to breathe deeply, to ask the real questions without rushing to answers.

Ritual isn’t about fixing.
It’s about remembering.

It’s the space where you return to who you were
before the stories formed around you—
or before you formed stories to survive.

It’s where the layers begin to fall away.
Where community can hold you without needing to shape you.
Where Spirit speaks in fire, in water, in earth, in breath.

And you remember:
You are not alone.
You never were.

We do this better—together.
I believe that.

If you’re ready to find a way into your truth as a way that heals—let’s begin together.