Page 127 of Unclench Me Softly

Our affirmation: “I am grounded, hydrated, and fully prepared to be emotionally ruined in the woods.”

Upcoming Retreats:

Stillness & Spoon Positions™ (BYO weighted blanket and safe word)

The Climax of Clarity™: A Candlelit Journaling Workshop for Post-Ritual Processing

The Five Pillars, But With Finger Paint – because who says emotional growth can’t be messy?

Don’t forget: you are always safe to unclench. Especially during full moon nacho night.

In softness and sustainable spiritual thirst,

Bliss

Founder, Facilitator, Emotional Field Guide

Bliss-ism #102/q

“You can’t spiritually evict someone who brought their own metaphor and matching pillow.”

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Pillows, Lynxes, and the Membership Plan

Day seven.

The final day of transformation, surrender, and pretending I haven’t accidentally created an entire micro-cult based on fabricated pillars, impromptu rituals, and five spiritually unstable men who somehow healed themselves by washing me in maple syrup and praise.

I sit cross-legged in my dome, wrapped in my robe, holding a protein bar I have no intention of eating, and staring at my journal like it might stop the clock if I look at it hard enough.

It doesn’t.

The pages are filled with increasingly desperate schedules and abandoned ideas. Today’s original activity, Lavender Labyrinth Freeze Tag™, now feels like a cruel joke, some manic whimsy from a version of me who wasn’t emotionally unraveling into her glitter pen while realizing her retreat is actually ending.

They’re packing today, gathering up the bits and pieces of themselves they’ve reclaimed, stuffing new versions of their souls into duffel bags like it’s that easy, like you can just take a better version of yourself home in carry-on.

They’ll leave.

They’ll go back to lives I never asked about, back to the cities and jobs and exes they half-muttered about during vulnerability charades, and I’ll sit here, pretending I’m fine, pretending I’m not already laughing through the tears I’ll schedule for three to five business days from now.

And the worst part, the truly unholy part, is that it worked.

The Five Pillars™, the rage yoga, the howling circles, the ash-drenched bonfire devotion, the pancakes of intention, the sponge-based rebirth ceremony that I absolutely made up on the fly, it all worked.

They’re softer now. Calmer. Whole.

And me?

I’m still here, robe slipping off one shoulder like an exhausted flag of surrender, heart pounding too loud in my ears, wondering how the hell you say goodbye to five men you were never supposed to let touch you, much less touch your soul.

I flip to a new page in my journal, hands shaking just enough to make the ink look panicked, and start a new plan because if there’s no plan, there’s just the gaping maw of reality waiting to swallow me whole.

Final Offering: The Labyrinth of Sacred Letting Go™.

They’ll walk the lavender path, breathing in, breathing out, shedding old versions of themselves at every twist and turn, leaving behind the broken kings and wounded boys they carried in with their clenched fists and guarded hearts.

It’s symbolic. It’s beautiful. It’s profound.

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