I Spent 20+ Years Healing Others. It Took Me That Long to Stop Apologising for It.

For a long time, I carried my healing work quietly. I wasn’t sure the world was ready for it. I was an energy healer and a teacher — and somewhere along the way, I had decided that this needed to be explained, justified, made more palatable.

I was showing up and then hiding back in my cave.

And from that cave, I made myself very, very available. I replied to messages at odd hours. I offered discounts before anyone even asked — because I told myself that money should never be a barrier to this beautiful work. I bent myself into whatever shape made it easiest for the person in front of me.

I thought I was being generous and kind.

What I didn’t see was that I was still focused entirely on pleasing. My focus was still external. I was still operating from the wound of being abandoned… on proving my worth, on making myself small enough to be accepted.

I wasn’t generous. I was afraid.

Afraid that if I showed up fully, took up space, charged what I was worth… they would leave. Or worse, maybe I would be laughed at.

Here is what I had lost sight of: 24 years.

Twenty-four years of learning, of practising, of sitting in the fire with my own healing long before I sat with anyone else’s. 

Years of investing in courses, in modalities, in trainings that took everything I had — financially, emotionally, physically. Years of going to the places inside myself that most people spend a lifetime avoiding, so that I could be fully present to others.

Shamanic journeying. Reiki. Soul retrieval. Energy medicine, Art Therapy, Yoga. Each one is not just a certification on a wall, but a lived experience. I didn’t just study these things. I was transformed by them.

And yet I watched people who had been in this field for five, maybe seven years, build thriving practices. They charged well. They held boundaries. They showed up with a certainty that I, with all my depth and experience, was still searching for.

I used to wonder: what do they have that I don’t?

Now I know. They owned it.

Owning your work doesn’t mean arrogance. It doesn’t mean posting declarations about how good you are. It’s quieter than that, and harder.
It’s internal.

It means walking into a conversation with a potential client without already deciding you will give them a discount. It means not over-explaining yourself in the hope that they will finally understand, or hiding behind the fact that they wouldn’t understand. 

It means trusting that the right person will see what you are offering and that it is enough, exactly as it is.

It means standing by your price — not because money is the point, but because what you are offering has value.
Twenty-four years of practice and still undercharging? 
You are not being humble. You are telling the Universe you are not serious about yourself.

“The moment I stopped apologising for what I do, something shifted. Not in my clients. In me.”

I want to speak directly to anyone reading this who recognises themselves in these words… the healer, the coach, the therapist, the teacher who is hustling harder than anyone around them and still wondering why it isn’t adding up.

It’s not your skill. It’s not your dedication. It’s not your knowledge.

It’s the story you are carrying about whether you deserve to be here.

And that story, that one is the work.

I didn’t write this to announce that I have arrived somewhere perfect. I wrote it because I’m still walking more sure of my own ground. And because someone out there needed to hear that your years, your investment, your depth, none of it is wasted. It’s all there. It was always there.

You just have to stop hiding it.

— Swati  |  Energy Healer & Teacher  |  20+ years of practice