What Being Seen Taught Me About Healing
- 8 hours ago
- 9 min read
Reena helps people move beyond symptoms, grief, and limiting patterns to reconnect with their true selves. Inspired by her own journey of loss, healing, and spiritual awakening, she has created the 6R Ascension™ Process, a structured pathway for deep transformation, self-discovery, and conscious growth.
A few days ago, several things I had been working towards happened all at once. My new 6R Ascension™ website was finally going live, a podcast where I had shared some very personal parts of my journey was about to be released, and that same morning, I received an email telling me my Brainz Magazine interview had also been published. These were all things I had chosen and worked towards, so I should have been excited. Instead, I remember thinking, Why have I done it? Am I really ready for this? What will everyone think? What if my family listens to the podcast? How will everyone react?
I am a very private person, and suddenly I felt very exposed. I had spent months working on the website because I wanted it to feel like me, warm, calm, and welcoming. I wanted someone arriving there to feel a connection, almost as though they had stepped into the space I try to create in my sessions, rather than simply reading about what I do. Yet when the moment came for me to be seen alongside it, all sorts of doubts came up too. It eventually made me smile because here I was, creating a space for healing and self-discovery while life was quietly giving me another opportunity to do some of my own.
When another layer appears
I used to think there might be a point in healing where you could say, I’ve dealt with that now, and move on. My experience has been quite different. We can work through something, understand it, and genuinely feel lighter, and then life presents another situation that brings back a familiar emotion. I don’t see that as going backward anymore. Sometimes we are simply seeing another layer, perhaps one we weren’t ready or able to see before.
This understanding sits at the heart of the 6R Ascension™ Process: Recognise, Release, Restore, Reconnect, Rebuild, and Radiate. Although there are six stages, I don’t experience them as six boxes we neatly tick in order. I can be rebuilding one part of my life while recognising something completely new in another. I can feel ready to Radiate and be seen, as I thought I was recently, and then realise that part of me needs support first. That’s where I am, and that’s okay.
What grief taught me about giving ourselves time
Some of my deepest understanding of healing came through grief. When my mother passed away during the pandemic, I couldn’t travel to India because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) restrictions at the time. I understood the reality logically, but emotionally, it was much harder to accept. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be with my sisters.
Alongside the grief was the guilt of not being there, but also a deep sense of being alone. For a while, I felt orphaned, regardless of how old I was. It was a lot to hold at once. Looking back, I realise I didn’t need to explain myself or push myself to be strong. I needed time, space, and permission to feel what I was feeling.
I can speak about my mother now with love and gratitude, and there are still moments when I cry. I no longer feel those two things contradict each other. Grief has taught me that there is no timetable for these things, and it has changed the way I sit with someone else’s loss too. I don’t want to hurry someone towards acceptance or try to find meaning in their pain before they are ready.
After a profound loss, I sometimes think we have to learn how to live again, almost like a child. We learn how to walk with what has happened, how to talk about it, and how to find our strength again. It does get easier, but that doesn’t mean leaving the person we love behind. We learn to carry that love differently.
Meeting the parts of myself I had forgotten
My own journey eventually led me towards inner child work, which surprised me because I remember very little of my childhood. I didn’t consciously carry anger or regret about it, yet when I began exploring that part of myself, memories and emotions surfaced that felt very real. There was sadness, anger, and jealousy, but there was also silliness, laughter, and memories of cracking jokes with my sisters for absolutely no reason. I wasn’t discovering only the difficult parts of my childhood. I was rediscovering the child I had been.
My adult mind could explain why certain things happened. It could rationalise them or decide that something shouldn’t matter anymore because so much time had passed. But the younger me wasn’t looking for an adult explanation. She needed love. She needed her feelings to be acknowledged and heard, and simply to know that what she felt was real.
That has stayed with me. If I feel anger now, I try not to judge myself immediately for it. If I am sad, I don’t need to pretend I am above sadness because I do healing or spiritual work. I am joy and love, but I also experience sadness, fear, and anger. All of that is part of being human.
What I have noticed is that the more I allow myself to acknowledge and accept these emotions, rather than resist or judge them, the less hold they seem to have over me. Their intensity begins to soften, leaving more space for calm and peace. For me, it isn’t about becoming a perfect version of myself. I would much rather understand and accept myself honestly.
We cannot walk someone else’s journey
There is another side to self-discovery that I have had to learn. Once we begin recognising patterns and seeing things differently, we naturally want to help the people we love. We see someone hurting and think, “If only they could see this,” or “If only they would try that.” I have done that too. But the people we love have their own journey, their own timing, and their own way of learning.
Respecting that doesn’t mean caring less. For me, it has meant learning the difference between supporting someone and feeling responsible for changing what they are going through. I am also learning to give people the space to find their own way while still supporting them, even if that sometimes means supporting them quietly and from a little distance. I am beginning to understand that I can care deeply without carrying everything they are feeling. That space gives them room to grow while also protecting my energy and keeping me grounded.
It has also taught me to look at myself when another person’s pain affects me deeply. Instead of focusing only on what I think they need, I can ask myself why their situation is affecting me in the way it is. Sometimes something in me is asking for attention too.
This is also how I see my work with others. I can listen, support, share what I sense intuitively, and offer the different approaches I have learned, but I don’t own another person’s journey. I can hold space and walk beside them for part of it. I can support, but I cannot walk the path for them. The journey remains theirs.
I have also had to learn something similar in my own relationship with my spiritual teachers. Many teachers and people have helped me at different stages of my life. For a long time, I felt a sense of responsibility to stay connected, to keep attending, or somehow remain loyal because of what I had received from them.
Over time, I began to understand that we can be deeply grateful for what someone has given us without feeling that we have to stay in the same place forever. We learn, we grow, and sometimes we are ready for another teacher or another experience. Moving forward doesn’t take away from what came before.
Knowing something and living it are very different things
More than twenty years ago, someone said something to me that I didn’t really understand at the time: “You don’t let anyone help you.” It stayed somewhere in the back of my mind, and it has probably taken me all these years to understand just how true it was.
Giving has always come much more naturally to me than receiving. I can still feel uncomfortable when somebody asks how much they should pay for a session. In fact, part of me is quite looking forward to having the website booking system fully running because then I can ask people to book there and avoid that conversation altogether! I know that’s another growth opportunity, but apparently I’m not quite ready for that one yet.
The same thing happens when somebody offers me something generously. My first response can still be, But I haven’t done anything for them. Should I really accept this? I know what I am doing when I do this. I understand the pattern. I’m just still learning to respond differently.
Then the website, podcast, and interview all became public at almost the same time, and suddenly I needed support. I shared how I was feeling with people I trusted, including a circle of people who have become very close to my heart. With them, I can show up as I am. Their encouragement, along with the kind messages I received from everyone else, reminded me how powerful it can be to feel genuinely supported. This time, instead of being the one offering support, I allowed myself to receive it. It really did help.
This is what Rebuild can look like for me. It isn’t necessarily a dramatic breakthrough. Sometimes life simply allows us to do something a little differently: accept the compliment instead of dismissing it, say no without explaining ourselves endlessly, ask for help, or allow somebody to do something kind for us. I am still learning this one, and I am quite happy to admit it.
What Radiate is beginning to mean to me
All of this has made me think differently about the final R: Radiate. When I developed the 6R Ascension™ Process, Radiate represented living more fully as ourselves, our truth, our gifts, our voice, and what we have to share. I still believe that, but I am beginning to understand that it doesn’t mean I have to lose the fear of being seen. Maybe it means allowing myself to be seen even when some of that fear is still there.
I sometimes think of a lighthouse. It doesn’t stop the storm or remain untouched by it, it simply stays grounded while the storm passes around it. I’m learning to stay grounded in much the same way: to care deeply without absorbing everything, to recognise what is mine to carry and what isn’t, and to protect my energy when I need to.
I’m certainly not there yet, but I understand myself a little better each time. Looking back, I think that’s partly why making the website, podcast, and interview public affected me so much. It wasn’t just about launching something I had created. I was allowing myself to be seen in a way I hadn’t before. It turns out I still have some work to do there, and that’s okay too.
Making the journey your own
I believe every person’s healing journey is unique. My own spiritual understanding includes energy, ancestry, consciousness, inner child work, and past lives, and those beliefs naturally influence the work I do. They may not be someone else’s beliefs, and I don’t need them to be. Not everything will resonate with everyone.
I think we have to permit ourselves to discover what genuinely helps us, take what serves us, and leave what doesn’t. Ask for support when you need it, whether that is from someone you trust, a therapist, a healthcare professional, a healer, or another form of appropriate support, but remember that the journey is still yours. Sometimes you may think you have worked through something, only for it to appear again. Before becoming discouraged, notice what feels different this time.
You may understand yourself better. Perhaps you ask for support sooner. Perhaps you recognise a boundary you couldn’t see before, or you can sit with an emotion you once wanted to run from. This journey has beautiful parts too. I don’t want healing to become an endless search for wounds, patterns, and things we need to release. There are moments of love, connection, laughter, and completely ordinary joy. Those matter just as much.
When I look back, I feel incredibly grateful for the people I have shared parts of this journey with. Some stayed for many years, some were there for a particular chapter, and some may not even realise what they taught me. I don’t think everyone who touches our lives is meant to remain in it forever. Sometimes we meet, share something, learn something from each other, and continue on our own way. That doesn’t make the connection any less meaningful.
I don’t know whether healing has a final destination, and these days I am not particularly concerned with finding one. I am more interested in the relationship I have with myself while I am living my life. I am not perfect, and I don’t want to be perfect. I am who I am. I am simply getting to know myself better. And for where I am today, that feels enough.
Read more from Reena Pathak
Reena Pathak, Creator of the 6R Ascension™ Process
Reena is the creator of the 6R Ascension™ Process and a passionate advocate for healing beyond symptoms and transformation beyond awareness. Drawing on her personal journey of grief, spiritual awakening, and conscious growth, she combines intuitive insight, spiritual/energy healing, ancestral healing, inner child healing, egression therapy, and Qi Gong to support meaningful, lasting change. Through her work, Reena helps individuals reconnect with who they truly are and step into lives of greater clarity, purpose, and alignment.
