It's up to you- it's always up to you. You can deny, repress, distort, and bury your unresolved wounds all you want. You can re-frame them, pseudo-positivity them, detach from them, bypass them. You can re-name yourself, hide away in a monastery, turn your story around. And you can spend all your money on superficial healing practies and hocus-pocus practitioners. But it won't mean a damn thing, if you don't do the deeper work to excavate and heal your primary wounds. The material is still there, right where you left it, subconsciously ruling your life and controlling your choices. This is the nature of unhealed material, it is alive, and one way or the other, it will manifest itself in your lived experience. It will language your inner narrative. It will obstruct your path and limit your possibilies. It lives everywhere that you live. And so you have to decide, excavate it and bring it into consciousness where it can be worked through and integrated; or repress it and watch it rule your life. It's one of the hardest truths we have to face; If we don't deal with our stuff, it deals with us. There is no way around this. Choose. - Jeff Brown, Grounded Spirituality