Resisting the Flattening: Identity & Medicine Alchemy

There is a quiet violence that can happen in healing spaces—not from malice, but from convenience. It’s the flattening of a living, breathing practitioner into a single modality, a tidy label, a searchable keyword. Reiki practitioner. Sound healer. Coach. Psychedelic-assisted therapist. These descriptors can be useful, even necessary, for helping the right people find us. But when we collapse ourselves fully into them, something essential gets lost.

Most of us didn’t arrive at our current work through a straight line. We arrived through pivots, griefs, curiosities, and moments when a once-right container suddenly felt too small. And often, when we leave a role or profession that no longer fits, we are subtly encouraged to leave all of it behind—as though the past was a mistake rather than a preparation.

But what if that isn’t true?

What if your history as a certified nurse anesthetist—the precision, the reverence for the body, the intimacy with altered states—was never meant to be discarded, only transmuted as you moved into work helping people feel beautiful, sovereign, and at home in themselves through aesthetics?

What if your years in a corporate environment—learning systems, deadlines, pressure, and performance—are precisely what allow you to coach others in nervous system regulation, burnout prevention, and sustainable creativity?

What if your life as an English teacher or a pharmacist was always quietly training you to work with story, metaphor, chemistry, pattern recognition, and meaning—laying the groundwork for energy healing and narrative medicine?

This is identity alchemy.

It is the practice of refusing to amputate parts of yourself in order to be legible. It is the willingness to hold tension instead of collapsing into a definition that feels too small. It is trusting that every chapter of your life was exactly right for what you are doing now—even the ones that felt stifling, misguided, or temporary.

When we allow ourselves to re-integrate the selves we once outgrew, our medicine deepens. Our work becomes less about performing a role and more about transmitting coherence. We stop asking, How do I explain myself? and start asking, What is the common thread running through everything I’ve ever done?

That thread—your way of seeing, sensing, synthesizing—is what actually helps people. Not the label.

Staying flexible in our identity is not a lack of clarity; it is a form of sovereignty. It allows our work to evolve as we evolve. It keeps us from being flattened again—this time by spiritual branding or professional respectability. And it gives others permission to do the same.

When we honor the full arc of who we are, we model a different way of healing: one that is spacious, integrative, and alive. One that says you don’t have to choose between your past and your purpose. You get to weave them together.

That is how we remain free spirits. And that is how our medicine stays true.